Wisconsin Death Trip
University of New Mexico Press - University of New Mexico Press
Release date: 2000-01-01
Paperback
Author: Michael Lesy
American history, Exhibition catalogues and specific collections, Local history, Photographic reportage, Photographs: collections, Photography & photographs, Collections Of Photographs, Wisconsin - Local History, History, Photography, Photo Essays, USA, General, Photoessays & Documentaries, Photography / Essays, Photography / Photoessays & Documentaries, United States - State & Local - General, Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions, 1893, 19th century, Black River Falls, Black River Falls (Wis.), Depressions, Pictorial works, Sources, Wisconsin
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Wisconsin Death Trip
Date undefinedMichael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip, originally a doctoral thesis, is one of the most touching, poetic, beautiful, harrowing, moving and dislocating works I have read. Basically a compendium of found glass plate negative photos taken by the (himself knock-knees odd) Charles Vam Schaik in and around the rural community of Black River Falls WI, and leavened by snippets taken from the Badger State Banner newspaper and the Mendota State Record Book (an insane asylum), as well as a few personal reminisces, the book instead is a commentary and an indictment of a brutal time of economic dislocation, social upheaval, religious confusion and obsession, and personal decay in a farming community. It is an endless repitition of suicide, madness, arson, children dying of disease, and of a mostly sternly religious people living the grimmest of lives of back breaking work in the country. The photos by their sheer repetition and some of the games played with them by the author, pound out a tattoo of strain, people only barely suppressing their madness, and a society truly on the edge of collapse. Hardly the bucolic paradise so often evoked in our time.
The afterword by the author provides some backstory and statistics backing the point up, and illustrating in numbers and facts what the pictures and excerpts made clear by anecdote, and is also well written.
This was something of a cult book in the mid 70s, a most unusual way of looking at local history, lifting up the rock under which society had crawled. It is haunting, tragic, striking. You will never forgot it.
Wisconsin Death Trip
Date undefinedBuying a classic again. This is the U of New Mexico Press version. The earlier publisher had the picture of the baby in a coffin on the cover. That was better, but the contents are the same.
Wisconsin Death Trip
Date undefined"Wisconsin death trip"is an accurate documentation,not only of "agrarian white"culture at the end of the 19th century but,in many ways,the whole of white culture in america at that time..Contrary to popular belief,the"good"old days were not really so good..Yes,they may well have been less complex,but infant mortality was very high,illnesses which today are highly treatable being killers not only of children but of adults as well,daily life being,for most,a drudgery,with little to show for one's efforts...There were few saftey nets,no antibiotics,no pensions to speak of,no recourse against the harshness life,or against a system that,like today,favors the wealthy..
Insanity was not understood,and "treatment"such as it was,often did little to help the afflicted...Wisconsin did not have a monopoly on such things,anymore than,say,los angles has a monopoly on street gangs,or newark has a monopoly on ghetto housing...
The novelty is perhaps in the seeing of the photographs and the documents all together in one volume,so that one can peruse the sorrowful aspects of that period as it affected one particular area...
