Jack Lueders-Booth


Jack Lueders-Booth is an American photographer. He retired from teaching at Harvard in 2000, and continues to live and work in the Boston area.

Early life

Lueders-Booth was born in Boston, MA on June 3, 1935. His father, Edward J. Booth, was a math professor and his mother, Marie G. Booth, a homemaker. Lueders-Booth is the oldest of six children, four girls and two boys. He was raised Catholic.
Lueders-Booth has lived in Boston, Ma. his entire life. After graduating high school, He began studying English at Harvard. Booth never finished his undergraduate degree, and instead began working for an insurance company, where he stayed for 15 years. Booth's interest in photography began when he was a young child, though this did not become a serious interest until he was 25.

Career

Teaching career

A self-taught documentary photographer, Jack Lueders-Booth left an office management company with Combined Insurance Company of America in 1970, at the age of 35, to pursue overriding interests in photography. Booth went to work for Harvard University as the manager of their photography teaching laboratory, and a year later began to also teach photography there.
In 1976, Booth took on a part-time study at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, which he designed to be a photographic education, and he received his master's degree in 1978. He worked as a photography instructor in Harvard University’s Extension and Summer School’s until 1999. Booth also taught at The Maine Photographic Workshop, teaching both beginning and advanced documentary seminars. He served as a guest critic and lecturer at The Art Institute of Boston, Boston University, University of Colorado Boulder, Dartmouth College, Emerson College, The Maine Photographic Workshops, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University, and Yale Graduate School of Art. In 1989, Booth was appointed Artist-in-Residence at Dartmouth College, and in 1983-84 he was guest Artist-Teacher at the Danforth Museum in Framingham, Ma. From 1983-1995, Booth received twelve Commendations for Distinguished Teaching, and three nominations for Harvard University’s Joseph P. Levenson Prize for Best Teacher of the Year.
In 2000, Booth semi-retired to adjunct faculty positions at, The School of The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Rhode Island School of Design, The Massachusetts College of Art, The Art Institute of Boston, and Lesley University College of Art and Design.

Photography

While working a full-time teaching schedule, Lueders-Booth pursued documentary projects at every opportunity. These included Chronic Disease and Custodial Patients - supported in part by a Harvard University Work Completion Grant from 1970-1973; The Salvation Army from 1974-1975; Camping Families in 1976; and Patmos, Greece in 1977. Booth photographed Women Prisoners, supported in part by fellowships from the NEA, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, The ‘Artists’ Foundation, and the Polaroid Foundation. Booth photographed the American Motorcycling Community and Culture from 1985–present. He also photographed Neighborhoods of the Orange Line, a branch of Boston’s public transportation system which runs through strongly segregated neighborhoods. This project was commissioned by Urbanarts and supported in total by group project grants from the Boston Arts Lottery, the Boston Globe Foundation, and the Rowland Foundation, and a personal grant from the Maine Photographic Workshops. Booth worked on a series of Cambridge Families Before gentrification, supported by a grant from the Cambridge Arts Council in 1987; of Lowell Folklife, a personal commission from the U.S. Library of Congress to work as photographer with oral historians conducting a contemporary and historical social study of Lowell, Ma., its traces to nineteenth century mill culture, and the recent influx of Southeast Asians fleeing the turmoil in their homelands from 1987-1988; Cambodians in New England, a personal continuation of the Library of Congress commission for The Addison Gallery of American Art’s exhibition Shifting Cultures from 1990-1991; and Families who live in and off of the Dumps of Tijuana from 1991-1998. Booth also received a Humanitarian Award from The Pine Street Inn, a Boston homeless shelter, for volunteer fund-raising photography.

2000-present

After leaving his teaching position at Harvard University, Booth pursued his interest in photography full-time. From 2000-2006, Booth worked on the series The Last Corner Store, a shop near Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 2005, Booth has photographed in and around Central Square, as well as at The Cantab and The Cantabridgean Lounge. This work has yet to be published.

Personal life

Booth has six adult children, Douglass, Laura, Gregory, Peter , Lucy Nguyen, and Evie Lueders-Booth. For fun, he plays darts, tennis, and races motorcycles. Booth lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Work and awards

Selected collections

Books
  • American Motorcycling Culture Published by STANLEY BARKER Books, 2025.
  • Women Prisoner Polaroids Published by STANLEY BARKER Books, 2024.
  • ' Published by STANLEY BARKER Books, 2022.
  • Inherit the Land
  • Across the Wire
  • By The Lake of Sleeping Children
  • John Lueders-Booth, Artist in Residence, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH
  • New American Photography
  • Photojournalism 1997, Graphis Press
Other Selected Publications'
  • American Photography Periodical
  • DoubleTake, The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
  • Selected Photographs from The Library of Congress American Folklife Center
  • Weddings, National Endowment for the Arts
  • New American Photography produced by Columbia College for the exhibition at the Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography
  • The article The Artist's Lens: A Focus on Relocation produced by the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University in their quarterly publication "Views."
  • The article John Lueders-Booth: Inside Stories published in Aperture's Quarterly Summer Vol. 91
  • The article Like Silk written by Marianne Wiggins and published in Aperture's Quarterly Spring Vol. 127
  • Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border written by Luis Alberto Urrea
  • Thoughts on Landscape: Collected Writings and Interviews written by Frank Gohlke
  • The Best Books of the Year written by David Schonauer
  • Lueders-Booth & Tuckerman @ The Art Institute of Boston'' written by Matthew Nash