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Oxford Project brings photos, stories to Hoover Museum
News · January 19, 2011
In 1984 Peter Feldstein wanted to photograph every resident of his town, Oxford, Iowa (pop. 676). He set up shop on Oxford’s main street and nobody came, in the next few days his only customers were students on their way home from school.
Eventually he connected with the Legionnaires and after that the project took off and he photographed 670 Oxford residents.
Twenty years later he did it again, but this time the residents did more than just pose for a photograph. Some of the original residents had died, and some had moved away but amazingly most of the 670 were still around. When the same residents were photographed again, this time author Stephen G. Bloom asked them to share their stories – their memories, fears, failures, successes – to tell stories about themselves.
The Oxford Project will be on display at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Museum from Jan. 22 to March 20.
The result of that project is an incredible collection of portraits and personal stories that tell the life of small town Midwesterners. Beneath Oxford’s ordinary surface is a community that embodies the American spirit.
Peter Feldstein is an artist working with photography, drawing, printmaking, and digital imaging. His work has been shown in galleries across the country. For more than three decades, Feldstein taught photography and digital imaging at the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History.
Stephen G. Bloom is the author of “Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (2000).” He also is the author of a collection of nonfiction stories and “Tears of Mermaids: A Secret History (2009).” Since 1993, Bloom has taught at the University of Iowa, where he specializes in narrative writing.
“The Oxford Project is a national portrait of overlooked triumphs and travails. In the faces and voices of these strangers, we grow to understand ourselves better. They remind us of who we dreamed we would become, and who we turned out to be.” – Stephen G. Bloom
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