Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy, First Edition

Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy

First Edition, First Printing, 1973

This is a first edition, first printing of the critically acclaimed photobook “Wisconsin Death Trip” published by Pantheon, New York in 1973. This was Lesy's first book, a photo-essay on life and death in a turn-of-the-century Wisconsin town that contains 154 photographs and photo collages and nine black-and-white illustrations. The New York Times critic commenting on the book wrote, “The offshoot of his doctoral thesis, Lesy's first photobook established him as a "maverick prodigy" and subsequent works continue his focus on "what Lesy calls 'demotic photography unveiling a far more wondrous place, greater in extent and breadth and twisted gnarly depth than you could ever imagine”. Writing in the reference work, “The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century” Vince Aletti wrote, “Drawing primarily from an archive of 3,000 images (culled from 30,000 glass-plate negatives) made by town photographer Charles Van Schaick and from newspaper accounts first printed in the Badger State Banner, Michael Lesy lays out an intricate patchwork of fact and fiction whose blighted nexus is the Wisconsin community of Black River Falls between the years 1890 and 1910."    In “The Photobook: A History”, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger write, "Ahead of its time Wisconsin Death Trip is a fiction, neither sociology nor history Lesy shows, above all, that history, no matter how persuasive is partial"

Measuring approximately 8.5" x 11", the book is a soft cover in photographically illustrated wraps. The condition of the book is FINE with the wraps being in Near FINE+ condition with some wear to the edges and tips as well as rubs to the laminate. Overall, a highly collectible copy of a title is rarely found in this condition.

Cited in all three reference works on photobooks:  “The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century” by Andrew Roth and “The Photobook: A History”, by Parr and Badger, and “The Open Book” by Andrew Roth.

Photographs of the book cover, Eric Kroll’s comments and signature, and several examples of photographs from the book appear below. Please note that although the photographs appear digitized as thumbnails, they are viewable in the photo viewer by clicking the thumbnail photograph and viewing the photographs as a slideshow.