《书目》(Booklist)书评

As in his famous Wisconsin Death Trip (1973), Lesy combines period photographs with an ironically related text in an effort to provoke thoughtful discomfort. Serene images of turn-of-the-century American glories accompany a chronology of the twentieth century's first decade that points up corporate greed, imperialist foreign policy, worker oppression, and natural and man-made disasters. The photos come from the archives of the Detroit Publishing Company, and many were made by the famous photographer of the American West William Henry Jackson, though which ones Lesy doesn't specify. Except for a few of African Americans, the pictures reflect pride in such achievements as a grand beach pavilion, a new skyscraper, a huge steel mill, and a great shipyard. The text, printed in eye-straining white on black, doesn't relate much to the pictures, which makes the irony and cynicism Lesy encourages harder to evoke. Nevertheless, as the work of one of the most interesting photographic historians and as a collection of wonderful period photographs, Dreamland is something to see. --Gretchen Garner