Through the attentive eyes of this compelled photographer-participant, we are privileged witnesses to the immediate and intimate facts, both cherished and chilling, of the personal lives, dwellings, and struggles of families who live and work in the garbage dumps of Tijuana, Mexico. Jack Lueders-Booth's photographs immerse us in this world of trash and those who rely on its gleaning for their existence. In Inherit the Land, the reader will find life lessons in survival, spirituality, and community, beyond ordinary comprehension and imagination. Lueders-Booth's penetrating photographs, made over a seven-year period, are further illuminated in a personal way with an essay by writer Luis Alberto Urrea. Author of The Devil's A True Story, Urrea worked as a missionary in the 1980s in the dumps that Lueders-Booth depicts in Inherit the Land.
"The Orange Line," a just published photo collection that I'm about to praise, is a different book by Jack Lueders-Booth that is not currently in the Goodreads database. I've asked Goodreads to add it, and meanwhile I'm using this book solely as a placeholder.
"The Orange Line" is a phenomenal book of mid-1980s photos of the old Boston elevated rail line - the Orange Line - that ran up and down Washington Street in Boston's South End. Lueders-Booth photographed life above, on the platforms, as well as life underneath the elevated. Many of his best photos are portraits of local residents. Because he used a large, and large-format, camera, his subjects always knew they were being photographed.
This is an effective and beautiful photographic essay of a neighborhood about to undergo a major change as the train line was torn down, taking with it some beautiful stations, in particular the famous Dover Street station on what is now a pretty boring part of East Berkeley Street.
Lueders-Booth, now "retired," is still taking pictures. I recommend his work!