Barbara Jean Goodbody

On January 13 we lost our beloved mother, grandmother, and dear friend Barbara, “Barbie”. She was a great figure in the Maine arts and passed away surrounded by family and loved ones at the age of 88.

Barbara imagined a world of peace, but more than that took deliberate action to advance that dream. In 2022, the Nobel Peace Laureate and student lead PeaceJam organization presented Barbara with a Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding generosity to the young people of PeaceJam and ensuring they are prepared to lead with compassion. In December 2018 she helped make possible and actively participated in the PeaceJam summit of young people from all over the world at the United Nations University for Peace to help solve the scourge of gun violence. There are far too many stories and achievements, adventures, and simple moments of leadership by example to list here. However, Barbara often talked of her Outward-Bound experience as being a Seminole moment in her life in ‘freeing her spirit”, especially the early morning dips at Hurricane Island in Penobscot Bay. Barbara later helped others share in the Outward-Bound experience. As a nearly lifelong member of the National Wildlife Federation, Barbara lived by the mantra; “be sure to leave your campsite in better shape than you found it”.

Barbara was a much-lauded photographer in her own right, experimenting with many processes and photographic genres, including abstract photography, digital collage, mordançage (or etch-bleach), Holga plastic camera images, documentary photography and more. But she was also a consummate philanthropist and humanitarian: Barbara was instrumental in establishing the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts in Portland as well as its more public gallery on Middle Street, and she was responsible for obtaining accreditation for the photography programs at what is now known as the Maine Media Workshops and College in Rockport, where in addition she endowed the Ernst Haas Scholarship for young photographers. These were only a few of the recipients of her generosity. Others include the co-founding of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Portland, the establishment at the University of Southern Maine of the Bertha Crosley Ball Center for Compassion, and in India she was involved with Folk Arts Rajasthan and the Tibetan Home School.

Long interested in Eastern spirituality and comparative religions, she strove in her photography to convey other dimensions of reality and being in her work. She was not interested in simply capturing an image as a documentary memory, but rather the essence and inner life of whatever she was photographing. Photographic abstraction helped her to achieve this in her renowned “Indra’s Net” and “Salutation of the Dawn” series. The former is based on a central belief in the interconnectedness and interpenetration of all things. Of the latter, she has said “It’s not just the sunrise. There’s something else going on there.”

The pictures Barbara took were unbounded by her own ego or personality structures. Thus untethered, Barbara entered the souls of her subjects—whether in India or Japan or rural Maine—to capture the ineffable tenderness of a mother’s hand on her son’s head and the incandescent ephemerality of the sun’s light as it fades behind the horizon.

Barbara is survived by her three children; Bridget Goodbody, Robert Goodbody, Jim Goodbody, and her four grandchildren; Ben Goodbody, Abigail Radey, and Marcus & Hannah Goodbody.

A Celebration of Barbara’s life will be held at 11:00am on January 27, 2025 in Cumberland, Maine. If you would like to join us, please reach out to her son Robert at (303) 550-4857 or email Robert at rgheadwind@gmail.com for location details.