Billy Sunday

Billy Sunday

from 'Wisconsin Death Trip'

Michael Lesy is a cultural historian and professor of Literary Journalism at Hampshire College. He is not a photographer but has written extensively about photographs and photography. This image (minus the wings, which were added for the cover) is from Lesy's first book, 'Wisconsin Death Trip', a dark, image and text work based on photographs and newspaper articles from the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Lesy is a pioneer in the field of interpretive visual history.
'Billy Sunday', by the Australian writer Rod Jones, is a work of fiction involving three real figures from 19th century America, including Billy Sunday, a pro baseball player turned evangelist, and Charles Van Schaick, whose photographic archive forms part of the foundation of 'Wisconsin Death Trip'. KB