Regardless of your opinion on the subject matter, I can unreservedly recommend this piece as a sublime example of the photographer's art.
I'm only an interested amateur, not a professional photographer. But if you want to pick one of the photos from that article, I'll explain how it was created, to the best of my understanding, and how one might go about creating something similar without any need of multiple exposures or Photoshop trickery.
But all of that is no less "trickery" than the photoshop and bracketing/HDR is - not that I would call any of it trickery.
It's an aesthetic choice, and it's fine to disagree with that, also.
Perhaps "trickery" was a poor choice of words. Until very recently, I haven't really had much involvement or interest in photography since being taught the basics on a Nikkormat FTn in childhood; as a recent amateur armed with a low-mid-end DSLR and very little idea of what on Earth he's doing, I have to say that the modern photographic hobby, at least in its online exponents, seems in many quarters very much more concerned with hipsterism, gear fetishization, and tearing one another down, than with anything that seems more directly involved with actually taking pictures at all.
While I have very little respect for this sort of attitude, I do try where possible to avoid needlessly antagonizing anyone and I suppose the possibility exists that I might at some point need to get along with one of these sorts of jackasses, and so I'm in the process of refining my vocabulary and fashion of speaking on the subject in order to meet that need should it arise. 'Trickery' is the sort of word I'm under the impression such a person would use in similar circumstance, and so it managed to slip out here as well. Such errors will cease as I get this rather unpleasant style more accurately dialed in.
What is painful about these photos, to you?
This has been a regular part of photography from the darkroom days, manipulating the exposure time, masking parts to selectively reduce exposure, "burning in" other parts. Especially with BW photography.
The sort of other-worldly crispness, details, and groomed highlights can be upsetting to some people. But it sets this type of photography apart from say, documentary images and instead tries for a kind of art.
Not everybody is familiar with this sort of photography.
This also what separates it a bit from techniques like masking which don't change the underlying range available, but rather tweaking the exposure in an area. Dodging and burning are dark room techniques, which is a whole different kettle of fish.
As you note though, people used to do similar things with exposure bracketing in analog days - it's just a lot easier with digital.
Fundamentally you can get some pretty similar results with selective lighting. After all you are locally changing the effective represented photon density hitting your receptor, either way.
Just saying HDR should refer to the process. The output photo, as you say, only has a normal dynamic range, compressed from the inputs.
Your preferred approach isn't objectively any better (all kinds of processes could result in higher dynamic range outputs, some of which are arguably "cheating").
So what we have is a reasonable choice between imperfect alternatives that are mostly equivalent - but that choice is made now and far better to get on with it than quibble about it.
There's a couple of shots that look like they might been exposed for the night sky with soft flash used to light the foreground. e.g. the cars art installation and the desert tree.
If they had been made using standard HDR techniques I would have expected the street lights not to have blown out quite so much.
I could very well be wrong though, as I said, I have only a passing knowledge of HDR. If anyone knows for sure I'd love to hear about the techniques used.
Also road trip photography journeys a la Stephen Shore and Timothy O'Sullivan are so overdone. It's like the liberal arts student rite of passage these days.
I'd love to know where in this you find projection of a false reality. While I think you're not wrong in general, with regard to the use of non-urban America by both US political parties as a blank slate suitable for filling up with whatever claims they care to make on the basis of whatever largely confabulated situation they care to claim exists, I really don't see anything to suggest this photographer set out to make any kind of US partisan political point whatsoever; he seems [1] to be an Englishman who just really likes to take pictures at night, and who came to the US to do so in part because he has a hard time finding nights dark enough for his taste at home. While it'd be hardly without precedent for an Englishman to come to the United States in order to comment on our culture political and otherwise, I see nothing to suggest this particular Englishman has done so, and I would be interested to see any evidence to the contrary that I might perhaps have missed.
That point aside, let's talk a little more about the way our political parties use the vast majority of the United States that isn't heavily urbanized. What makes it possible for such misuse to occur without meaningful challenge? Does it seem plausible that, were those to whom these parties market such claims better informed about the true way of things in places like where I grew up, it would be difficult, indeed perhaps impossible, for such claims to be effectively sold?
To be abundantly clear, I don't suggest that Mr. Freeman has done such work in his 'USA at Night' series, or that it's reasonable to expect he do so. His work makes it abundantly clear that he seeks to create art, rather than to document, and I think he achieves his goal quite marvelously.
Finally, to that point - I'm not here to tell you that your opinion of Freeman's work is in error. It's yours, and you're welcome to it. But I am curious to know a little more about where that opinion originates. Is it purely in the political and, I guess, vaguely hipsterism-related concerns you raise later in your comment? Or does it in some way have to do with the fashion in which these photographs were actually composed and produced? You speak of lighting and retouching, but to me the former seems subtly and tastefully done, and the latter done with so light a hand that it's not at all evident in the final result - as I said before, there's nothing here that couldn't be done with film, by someone with a similar degree of skill and craftsmanship. I can think of some other ways in which the same subjects might be as effectively photographed, but I have no idea whether that's anything like what you have in mind, and I'd be very interested to hear more from you about why it is that you find these particular photographs so distasteful.