In the fall of 1968 I began a year-long project to photograph the Boston suburbs.
At that time, I was a Course XXI concentrator at MIT (Humanities) and I was also studying photography in
Minor White’s program.
It was a year of assassination, violence, and protest against the war in Vietnam and against the suppression of civil rights at home.
The photographs in this series are from Brookline and Newton, the places I grew up.
I was twenty years old.
Laura Wexler was educated at Sarah Lawrence College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University College, London, and Columbia University. She is a historian of photography and author of many books and articles on U.S. visual culture. She has taught at Columbia University, Amherst College, Trinity College, Wesleyan University, Peking University, and Yale University, where she is Professor of American Studies; Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies; and Director of the Photographic Memory Workshop.