CAREER & MONEY
FOLLOW YOUR HEART, THE REST WILL FOLLOW
St. Louis Post-Dispatch photojournalist finds work gratifying
By ERIN WILLIAMS
When she entered college at Louisiana State
University in 2003, Cristina Fletes planned to
leave four years later with an English degree
in hand, armed and ready to be a writer.
But it was while in an English class that
she was introduced to her true calling photography.
“It was because we were reading ‘Let Us
Now Praise Famous Men,’ and the writer,
James Agee, kept saying, “I wish I could
convey to you the suffering of the Great
Depression. It was just so hard, you could
see it on people’s faces,’ and on and on,”
Cristina said. “I was frustrated and flipping
through the book, and I landed on some
photographs by Walker Evans. I looked at one
particular photo and thought, ‘this whole
book could be summed up in this one photo.’
And I got it.”
Almost immediately, Cristina, a Memphis
native, changed her major to studio art,
but contemplating the reality of being a
photographer on the street, doing the work,
almost stopped her.
“I was feeling a calling in my heart, but I
knew I couldn’t talk to strangers. I am a
quiet, shy and pensive writer,” she said. “But
to do the job that I truly feel I was called to
do, I knew I had to break out of that.”
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She graduated and went on to earn a master’s
degree in journalism in 2011 from The
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
and spent time interning at NPR and “The
Washington Post.” She wasn’t sure where she
wanted to land, career-wise, but was intrigued
by working in a news environment.
Post-grad, Cristina was working as an
adjunct professor at UNC at Chapel Hill and
freelancing, and enduring one of the most
emotionally draining times of her life. Within
a year, five close family members died - most
shockingly her brother and sister-in-law,
who were killed in a car accident on the way
to her grandfather’s funeral. In an effort to
clear her head, in 2013, Cristina and her best
friend embarked on a road trip from North
GAZELLE STL
From left to right, facing forward, Elena Bollman, 8, (lying down) Arianna Dougan, 8, Madison
Lamoureux, 9, Anastasia Chostner, 8, and Madeline Miller, 8, (with glasses) laugh as they land
after falling backward as part of a dance number at St. Louis Academy of Dance in Olivette,
Missouri on Tuesday, Feb. 10. Dougan is currently undergoing treatments for neuroblastoma.
Photo by Cristina M. Fletes
Carolina to Portland. They stopped in St.
Louis to stay overnight with Cristina’s friend
in Maplewood, and it was then that the
future began to present itself.
“She took us down to Sutton Boulevard,
and we played skeeball and walked along
Manchester - and I said, ‘I didn’t know that St.
Louis was such a neat place!’ She said I should
come and work at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.”
Not long after the visit, Cristina saw the
paper had a posting for a photojournalist
position, and she applied. The process was
grueling, but she kept making it through
round after round, and was finally hired. “If
I hadn’t gone through all those tragedies,
I wouldn’t have had the guts to do it,” she
said of going for the job .
Cristina said that beyond living out her
dreams, she was also acting in the spirit
of her brother. “He always wanted to be a
mechanic - and he never got to be that.
Since he didn’t get to live out his dreams
– I thought I would do that for him.”
Cristina Fletes.
Photo by Raffe Lazarian