In 1987, Boston’s oldest and busiest eighty-seven-year old elevated train was demolished to make way for a new underground subway line. Sponsored by the MBTA and organized by the Urbanarts Committee in 1985, John Lueders-Booth participated in a photographic project in 1985 to document the buildings, streets, and the people of the neighborhoods that would be most affected by the train’s removal. For eighteen months, Lueders-Booth photographed areas between Chinatown and Jamaica Plain with an 8 x 10 camera to capture how the structure intersected with the everyday lives of its residents. The McMullen Museum welcomes Jack Lueders-Booth for a virtual talk to discuss his publication focused on this body of work, “The Orange Line,” published in fall 2022 by Stanley Barker.
John Lueders-Booth taught photography at Harvard University between 1970 and 2000. His photographs are included in the collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park; the Hood Museum; the Fogg Art Museum; the Library of Congress; the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA; and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. Recently Aperture included a series of Lueders-Booth’s photographs of “Women Prisoners” in its “Prison Nation” issue. A selection of those images were on view at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College through June 5, 2022.
