The Art of Motorcycle Photography

When Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) tutor John Lueders-Booth goes to work, he sometimes finds himself surrounded by thousands of motorcyclists.

Booth does not fix engines or work in a mechanic's shop. He travels the nation taking photographs of "members of the American motorcycling community"--a diverse group of people ranging from pre-teen racing cyclists to members of the infamous Hell's Angels gang.

"It's difficult to justify on intellectual or artistic grounds--I prefer to think of it as social science or social documentary," says Booth, who is currently photography tutor with the VES Department.

Booth first started taking pictures of motorcycles and their riders about four years ago, because he says he thought they were "interesting and colorful" subjects. He wanted to "represent something of the diverse community in motorcycling now" through his art, which will be placed on exhibit at Dartmouth College next year. Booth has also submitted most of the hundreds of photos he has taken to Aperture Quarterly Magazine for publication.

The 53-year-old photographer, who used to work as a manager in an insurance company, has included several categories of motorcyclists in his project: Harley-Davidson riders, club and professional racers, child racers and middle-aged riders.

Harley-Davidsons

The largest portion of Booth's work focuses on Harley-Davidson riders. People who ride Harleys, the only type of motorcycle made in the U.S., are part of a unique culture, says Booth, who has managed Harvard's photography laboratory since he arrived here in 1970.

"Some would regard [riding Harley motorcycles] as a right-wing patriotic statement," he says.

"Motorcycling had a bad image prior to the 1960s--a marginal sort of image, perpetrated and supported by movies like the Marlon Brando film, 'The Wild One,'...about an alienated kid who confronted his hostility by being part of this motorcycle gang that goes into a small town and causes utter chaos," according to Booth. The Hell's Angels, a "notorious, infamous gang of outlaws who ride primarily Harley [motorcycles]," also contributed to this negative image of bikers.

"The counter-culture image [before the 1960s] has now become theater to contemporary Harley-Davidson riders. I think that's part of what makes them so willing to be photographed," Booth says.

Most present-day Harley riders feel an allegiance to this image, Booth says. "Only a Harley rider is part of that community," not those who ride Japanese-made bikes.

Clothing, such as suspenders, shirts, shoes, rings and tattoos, bearing the Harley-Davidson emblem are also an important part of the Harley image. They are symbols that a biker belongs to this "alienated counter-culture."

Booth calls the bikers who take up motorcycling in their middle-aged years the "mid-life crisis" cyclists, who make up another section of his bike photography. They are "people who've never ridden before and are now in their 40s and 50s with [the] disposable time and income to take up motorcycling," he says. "They are the type of people who might buy a motorhome, but now they buy a motorcycle."

Yet another group of pictures in Booth's collection feature child dirtbike racers. Children often as young as eight years old are pictured holding trophies with their proud parents in the background.

"How parents could let their kids do this is beyond me," says Booth, whose parents would not allow him to ride bikes until he reached adulthood.

Cult Events

There are several events across the country each year at which motorcyclists congregate in large groups, many of which have been photographed by Booth.

One of the most popular of these is Speed Week, which takes place every spring in Daytona, Florida. While the ostensible reason for the Florida extravaganza is to watch an international motorcycle roadrace, most cyclists today are there just to be part of the crowd.

"Thousands and thousands of people come and just cruise up and down main street. It's a social event--they don't even watch the racing," Booth says.

Booth pictures many of subjects at Speed Week at the Boot Hill bar, a famous Harley-Davidson hangout.

Booth has also photographed one of the more bizarre motorcycling gatherings in this country, the Blessing of the Motorcycles. Every June, more than 1000 cyclists travel to the Shrine of Our Lady of Grace in Colebrook, N.H. to attend a religious service.

"Once a year they go there to this religious monastery, and they camp out overnight. The next day, a priest gives a homily about the holiness of the road and its relation to spiritual value and responsibility. Then the motorcyclists go out between two priests who bless them."

More than 1000 bikers from the U.S. and Canada attend the blessing--and Booth has been there among them to photograph the procedings for the past four years. Last year, the bikers gave a prize to the motorcyclist who traveled the farthest to reach the New Hampshire event.

Locally, hundreds of cyclists gather every year at the old Indian Motorcycle manufacturing plant in Springfield, Mass., which has now become a museum. Although Indian motorcycle manufacture ceased in the 1950s, the bikes "still have a devout following."

Other Interests

Booth is currently finishing a year-long project commissioned by the Library of Congress taking pictures of Lowell, Mass. for a documentary on "the culture, tradition and ethnic practices" of Lowell. The town had been a model city for industrialists in the 1800s, when it was a major producer of textiles, but it was hard-hit by economic slumps earlier this century. Lowell is now emerging as a revitalized city and a center for the computer industry.

Also last year, Booth took pictures of the neighborhoods through which the Boston subway's Orange Line was recently extended, for an exhibit called Along the EL. Booth says he hoped to capture the ethnicity of the neighborhood, whose character would probably change in the future due to the destruction of the old elevated subway line.

Booth took pictures of women inmates in Framingham Women's prison from 1978 to 1982, after he had completed a stint there teaching photography. A portfolio of these photographs was published in Aperture Quarterly in 1983. The exhibit was also shown by the Midtown Gallery in New York City and the Marion Art Center.

Other selections of Booth's pictures have been exhibited at the Clarence Kennedy Gallery in Cambridge and at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In addition, New York's Museum of Modern Art recently purchased one of his motorcycle photos and displayed it there in an exhibit.

Motorcycling has been a part of Booth's life for many years. "Owning them, riding them, tuning them, racing them--I've been around motorcycles all my life since I was nine years old, although I didn't start riding them until my 20s," Booth says.

Booth, who teaches a section of an introductory photography course here, says he "became involved with [motorcycles] in the 1950s, when the only ones around were European. It was not a popular pastime. To ride one you had to have a certain amount of athletic ability and mechanical skill."

Booth's interest in "the competitive aspects of automotive sports" extends to participation in motorcycle racing. He has raced in club road races in Massachusetts and New York, as well as in Mexico.

Though at the moment he spends much of his time working on other projects, Booth plans to continue taking pictures of motorcyclists. The project "could go on indefinitely," Booth says.