American Motorcycling Culture

Some obsessions never let you go. For Jack Lueders-Booth, it began when he was nine years old and saw his first motorcycle and fell in love. Now Ninety, riding, racing, repairing, and rebuilding bikes has been his life’s devotion.

His new book, American Motorcycling Culture, delves into his archive from 1980 to 2000. It stands as a record of machines and the people who rode them: bikers in heavy leathers on American-made Indians, fresh-faced kids on their first ride, pro racers pushing themselves and their bikes as far as they would go. Harleys and Beemers, Beezers and Trumpets, Ducs, Hondas, Kawas, Suzukis, Yamahas.

Lueders-Booth is a singular photographer, intent on showing communities as they are, honest, imperfect, unadorned. When he wasn’t on a bike, he was behind a camera or in a classroom, teaching photography in a women’s prison, then later at Harvard, always drawn to the edges of things, to lives rarely shown in full light. These photographs carry that restless hum, the thrill and the risk, the romance and the trouble, the small freedom of choosing the open road over the humdrum.

These photographs show something of what American motorcycling culture had been at the end of the 20th century: road racers, women racers, child racers, vintage racers, enduros, motocrossers, motorcycle blessings, swap meets, street cruisers, good guys and bad guys.