USA Projects

For more than 30 years Michael Lesy has been using archival photographs and other ephemeral source materials to create publications that have profoundly influenced many artists, writers, and critics. By juxtaposing found images with biographies, descriptions, and short texts that he either discovered or wrote, he creates poetic, evocative essays that are almost cinematic in scope and effect. His first book, Wisconsin Death Trip (1973), explored the gruesome side of a small town in Wisconsin in the nineteenth century through images culled from the archives of a local newspaper. Since then, he has produced volumes such as Dreamland, which reprints old postcards. Lesy earned a PhD in American cultural history from Rutgers University and is currently a professor of literary journalism at Hampshire College.

Portrait photo courtesy Jacqueline Hayden

Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties, 2007; photo courtesy W. W. Norton & Company