Catherine Just
Catherine started using drugs and alcohol when she was 13 to take the edge off of a traumatic childhood. By 18 she was addicted to crystal meth. Then one day, in the throes of addiction, she heard a voice. It said, “There’s more to this life than what you’re living.” Something in Catherine woke up and she got sober.
Once Catherine was sober she “checked herself into art school” because making art was all she loved to do. In art school she found photography. Photography allowed her to dive into her feelings and express them visually. It was the beginning of her path home.
But ten years later, still sober, Catherine hit another wall and found herself struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts. It was then that she was introduced to spirituality through Don Miguel Ruiz and the Toltec Path.This spiritual practice, coupled with art and AA, gave her the tools to transform her life.
Today Catherine, 32 years sober, uses photography to help others return to their essence. Using a 4×5 large format film camera, Catherine captures, in a single image, “the breath, heartbeat, dreams, wishes, and desires” of her subject. Her photography has been published on the cover of National Geographic Magazine, inside O Magazine, Photo District News Magazine and shown in galleries in the US and France.
It’s her commitment to being fully awake and alive, that gives her work so much power. It’s the way she shows up for each image, aware of all that is in the room and all that wants to be seen, that makes Catherine’s images so much more than a picture. Everything she found hard as a young woman, everything she ran from, she now opens up to and lets it infuse her art and her life. She is an incredible woman who turns darkness into light and being human into something truly beautiful.
Some things we talk about…
- being addicted to meth at 16 and getting sober at 18
- the power of photography to capture everything: the seen and unseen, the known and unknown
- how art helped her settle into herself and find her way into the world
- diving into the unknown as a business strategy
- how to use future writing as a tool to create the life you desire
“We think we need to change because of what expectations the world has on us but really we need to nurture how we are and who we are and really believe in ourselves as we are. We don’t need to change something to fit in. If they don’t accept us as we are, they’re not our people.”
“The things that we see, and can’t see, are all having an opportunity to express themselves whether we know it or see it or not and it’s not my job to make sure you see the thing. It’s just my job to open the shutter and allow it. I have the experience when I look through a lens that I see my version of god looking back at me. I feel that it’s everything: seen and unseen, known and unknown.”
let’s connect.
letters from my heart about what’s on my mind. the business and the personal.