Jack Lueders-Booth's The Orange Line is a tenderly made archive of a community that lived and worked along the southern route of Boston's Orange Line: an ageing, noisy elevated railway built in 1901. Pavements vibrated with the rumble of the deteriorating railway. Its ugliness, rising crime and inefficiency depressed property values in the neighbourhoods it served. An unintended consequence was affordable housing for this largely low-income population.
 
In 1985, the Orange Line's southern section was scheduled for demolition and rerouting, raising fears of higher rents, possible displacement and the loss of public transport to metropolitan Boston. Change seemed imminent and displacement likely.
 
"These photographs were taken to preserve some record of the people who lived and worked along the southern stretch of Boston's Orange Line." —Jack Lueders-Booth
 
In 1970, aged 35, Jack Lueders-Booth left his business career to pursue photography. He taught photography at Harvard University from 1970 to 1999, receiving three nominations for Harvard's Joseph P. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize. He subsequently taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Tufts University, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Art Institute of Boston.