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.