JOHN SUITER is a writer-photographer living in Chicago since the fall of 2010. He
is author of the critically acclaimed
Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder,
Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the North Cascades, published in 2002
by Counterpoint Press. Born and raised in the Philadelphia

area, Suiter received his bachelor's degree, in American Literature and
Creative Writing, from Syracuse University in 1973. In the late 1960s
and early 70s he traveled around the United States, writing free-lance
articles for underground newspapers such as the Berkeley Barb, the Madison
Kaleidoscope, the
Syracuse Nickel Review, and
The Black Panther. From 1981 to 2005 he made his home in Boston, where, in the mid-1980s he returned
to school, taking courses in photography at the Art Institute of Boston
and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Since 1989, he has worked in Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago as a professional photographer for a combination of commercial, non-profit, and editorial clients. From 1997 to 2006 he taught workshops in Digital Imaging at the New England School of Photography.
In 1989, he published his first extensive photo-essay, for Bostonia
magazine, entitled "Kerouacs Lowell," ten images of locales in
present-day Lowell, Massachusetts, that were settings for books by Jack
Kerouac. This photo-essay led in turn to Suiter’s receiving a culture
grant from the Department of the Interior to create an exhibit of images
of Kerouac locales for the Lowell Preservation Commission. In 1993, that
exhibit, "Rumors of Kerouac," was shown at the James McNeil Whistler
House in Lowell and the Boott Gallery at Lowell National Historical
Park.
In 1994, he was Associate Producer of the award-winning multimedia
project, A Jack Kerouac CD-Romnibus. Also that year, six of his
Kerouac-related photographs were exhibited at the Washington Square East
Gallery in New York City in the group show, "The Birth of the Beat
Generation."
In 1995, Suiter traveled to the North Cascades, where he spent two weeks
working as a volunteer fire lookout for the National Park Service at
Desolation Peak. From this trip, Suiter produced an exhibit of
photographs for the North Cascades National Park Visitors' Center in
Newhalem, Washington. In 1996-97 he published a series of photo-essays
and articles on Kerouac and Desolation Peak for The Seattle Times, The
Independent (London, England), Sierra, and Shambhala Sun. In 1997 and
'98, Suiter returned to the Cascades for further shooting trips and also
met Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen in California. He made portraits of
them, taped interviews, and began the extensive correspondence with them
which would inform his book, Poets on the Peaks.
In June 2000, he published a lengthy article on the death of the Pop
artist Ray Johnson, for The Sunday Review of The Independent in London.
Also in 2000, a selection of his Kerouac-related photographs from
Lowell, Mexico, and the North Cascades entitled "Jack Kerouac's America:
A Photographer's Journey," was exhibited at Salem State College in
Salem, Massachusetts, and later in the year at the Amerikahaus gallery
in Frankfurt, Germany. He was also invited to teach a seminar on the
poetry of Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac in the American
Studies Department of Goethe University in Frankfurt. In December 2000
he returned to California for further interviews with Snyder, Michael
McClure, Philip Lamantia, and Joanne Kyger. Poets on the Peaks was
completed in January 2002. Throughout this period and to the present he
has continued to do free-lance assignment work for commercial and
editorial clients. He is presently at work on a biography of Gary Snyder.