In 1984, photographer Peter Feldstein set out to photograph
every single resident of his town, Oxford, Iowa (pop. 676).
He converted an abandoned storefront on Main Street into a
makeshift studio and posted fliers inviting people to stop
by. At first they trickled in slowly, but in the end, nearly
all of Oxford stood before Feldstein's lens. Twenty years
later, Feldstein decided to do it again. Only this time he
invited writer Stephen G. Bloom to join him, and together
they went in search of the same Oxford residents Feldstein
had originally shot two decades earlier. Some had moved.
Most had stayed. Others had passed away. All were marked by
the passage of time.
In a place like Oxford, not only
does everyone know everyone else, but also everyone else's
brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, lovers, secrets,
failures, dreams, and favorite pot luck recipes. This
intricate web of human connections between neighbors
friends, and family, is the mainstay of small town American
life, a disappearing culture that is unforgettably captured
in Feldstein's candid black-and-white portraiture and
Bloom's astonishing rural storytelling.
Meet the town
auctioneer who fell in love with his wife in high school
while ice-skating together on local ponds; his wife who
recalls the dress she wore as his prom date over fifty years
ago; a retired buck skinner who started a gospel church and
awaits the rapture in 2028; the donut baker at the Depot who
went from having to be weighed on a livestock scale to
losing over 150 pounds with the support of all of Oxford; a
twenty-one-year-old man photographed in 1984 as an infant in
his father's arms, who has now survived both of his parents
due to tragedy and illness.
Considered side-by-side,
the portraits reveal the inevitable transformations of
aging: wider waistlines, wrinkled skin, eyeglasses, and
bowed backs. Babies and children have instantly sprouted
into young nurses, truck drivers, teachers, and rodeo
riders, become Buddhists, racists, democrats, and drug
addicts. The courses of lives have been irrevocably altered
by deaths, births, marriages, and divorces. Some have lost
God--others have found Him. But there are also those for
whom it appears time has almost stood still. Kevin
Somerville looks eerily identical in his 1984 and 2004
portraits, right down to his worn overalls, shaggy mane, and
pale sunglasses. Only the graying of his lumberjack beard
gives away the years that have passed.
Face after
face, story after story, what quietly emerges is a living
composite of a quintessential Midwestern community, told
through the words and images of its residents--then and now.
In a town where newcomers are recognized by the sound of
an unfamiliar engine idle, The Oxford Project invites you
to discover the unexpected details, the heartbreak, and the
reality of lives lived on the fringe of our urban culture.
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