The Oxford Project

Book excerpt: The Alex-award winning The Oxford Project is back in an abridged paperback edition. Less expensive, more portable, and retaining all the drama of this extraordinary true tale of a seemingly ordinary Midwestern town through the pictures and words its residents. Equal parts art, American histroy, cultural anthropology, and human narrative - The Oxford Project is at once personal and universal, surprising and predictable, simple and profound. The Project began in 1984, when photographer Peter Feldstein set out to photograph every single resident of his town, Oxford, IA (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 his 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. What emerges is a living composite of a quintessential Midwestern community, told through the words and images of its residents - then and now. This intricate web of human connections among neighbors, friends, and family is the mainstay of small-town American life - unforgettably captured here in Feldstein's candid black-and-white photography and Bloom's rhythmic storytelling.