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The Oxford Project
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.
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.
287 pages, Hardcover
First published September 16, 2008
4 people are currently reading
1439 people want to read
About the author
Stephen G. Bloom
10 books16 followersI teach narrative journalism at the University of Iowa. I'm the author of The Audacity of Inez Burns: Dreams, Desire, Treachery & Ruin in the City of Gold (Regan Arts, 2018); Tears of Mermaids: The Secret Story of Pearls (St. Martin's Press, 2011); The Oxford Project [with photographer Peter Feldstein] (Welcome Books, 2010); Inside the Writer's Mind (Wiley, 2002); and Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (Harcourt, 2000). I've worked as a reporter for The Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, San Jose Mercury News, and Sacramento Bee. My essays and articles have appeared in Smithsonian, Sunday Guardian, The New York Times, Best New Writing 2016, Salon, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. For more information, please see: https://clas.uiowa.edu/sjmc/people/st...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 185 reviews
September 27, 2013
As a Sociology nerd this book was like crack. I devoured it in a matter of hours. I want all my friends to read it. I want to look these people up on Twitter and ask about them. I'm so curious to know more about them but honestly I feel as if I already do. While I don't live in Oxford Iowa these were my neighbors, these people were my grandparents, my mother and father, my friends, teachers and cousins. I knew these people without ever having met them. Reading this book is one of those wonderful moments in life that stitches the world up a little tighter. The kind of moment you get that allows you to sit back and hum quietly to yourself the thought that this is a small world after all.
January 13, 2009
This coffee table sized book that features black and white photographs of the citizens of a small Iowa town taken over 20 years apart is a serious showstopper. I've been pouring over it for almost a month, reading and re-reading sections and looking into the honest, hardworking faces of these people that I now feel like I know. Each set of photos is accompanied by a short bio, written by photo's subject. Some are funny, some are sad or regretful, but my favorite would have to be this quote from Ralph Neuzil: "Every man is entitled to a good coonhound, a Cadillac, and a wife--not necessarily in that order." I'm a fool for things like this where the reader is given an insight into a job, a personality or a lifestyle that is completely different from what they know. I also love that the photographer was a big city man who settled in Oxford and took the pictures as a way to get to know his neighbors better.
June 12, 2015
In 1984, a photographer took portraits of practically every person living in Oxford, Iowa. Twenty years later he went back and reshot all of them who were still living in the area. The book groups them together in different ways - by family, or a bunch of WWII veterans - and includes excerpts from interviews done with some. Comparing the pictures side-by-side is amazing.
November 29, 2012
The Oxford Project
By Peter Feldstein
287 pages
The Oxford Project is a very fascinating book. Through the lens of Peter Feldstein’s camera, we are able to see nearly every resident of Oxford, Iowa over a twenty year span. In 1984 Feldstein set up his camera in an empty storefront and invited every person in Oxford to come in and have his or her picture taken. He shot 670 out of the 676 in the town at the time. Over twenty years later in 2005, Feldstein set up a camera again and photographed all the remaining residence from 1984. With each person’s photo he also had Stephen G. Bloom capture the highlights of these people’s lives in short blurbs. I really enjoyed this book because I love photography and candid shots are so much fun to take. I could tell that was the effect that Feldstein was going for; he didn’t want a yearbook photo type of feeling but to capture peoples personalities in each shot. Not only that but The Oxford Project gives a very accurate and honest personification of small town America. I noticed that some stereotypes are true but that also, many of those people are very open-minded and interesting. All the way from the man who’s owned about 13 lions in his life to the identical twins whose dad always painted the bottom of their feet to tell them apart. I definitely recommend this to anyone who wishes to read a nonfiction book with a fictional feel!
By Peter Feldstein
287 pages
The Oxford Project is a very fascinating book. Through the lens of Peter Feldstein’s camera, we are able to see nearly every resident of Oxford, Iowa over a twenty year span. In 1984 Feldstein set up his camera in an empty storefront and invited every person in Oxford to come in and have his or her picture taken. He shot 670 out of the 676 in the town at the time. Over twenty years later in 2005, Feldstein set up a camera again and photographed all the remaining residence from 1984. With each person’s photo he also had Stephen G. Bloom capture the highlights of these people’s lives in short blurbs. I really enjoyed this book because I love photography and candid shots are so much fun to take. I could tell that was the effect that Feldstein was going for; he didn’t want a yearbook photo type of feeling but to capture peoples personalities in each shot. Not only that but The Oxford Project gives a very accurate and honest personification of small town America. I noticed that some stereotypes are true but that also, many of those people are very open-minded and interesting. All the way from the man who’s owned about 13 lions in his life to the identical twins whose dad always painted the bottom of their feet to tell them apart. I definitely recommend this to anyone who wishes to read a nonfiction book with a fictional feel!
February 1, 2009
In 1984, photographer Peter Feldstein decided to photograph all 676 residents of his adopted home town of Oxford, Iowa. Twenty years later, he continued the project by phtographing as many residents from the initial sessions as possible. The book shows both photographs, and for many of the residents, Stephen G. Bloom has written brief first-person narratives drawn from interviews.
This is a fascinating book. The stark black and white portraits give you an instant sense of the person, and it it really interesting to see what has changed--and especially what has stayed the same--over a 20 year period. Many of the photographs are grouped by families, and so that adds another layer of interest. The short narratives--none are longer than a few paragraphs--fill out details of a person's life as well as the life of Oxford.
This is a fascinating book. The stark black and white portraits give you an instant sense of the person, and it it really interesting to see what has changed--and especially what has stayed the same--over a 20 year period. Many of the photographs are grouped by families, and so that adds another layer of interest. The short narratives--none are longer than a few paragraphs--fill out details of a person's life as well as the life of Oxford.
April 4, 2009
This big coffetable book was absolutely fascinating. It's an art project by a self-proclaimed obsessive (he's counted things all of his life). An art teacher at the U of Iowa moved to a small town near the university in 1984 and took pictures of everybody in the town, partly as a way to get to know all of the people there better. 20 years later, he took pictures of as many of the same people as he could, and had them tell a little bit about their lives. You get a very clear picture of life in the town over much of the 20th c., and it's extremely interesting what the residents wanted to tell about themselves and their families. Love the man who raised lions and the man who had a raccoon as a pet. There were both touching and tragic stories, like any place on earth. 4 1/2 stars.
August 3, 2009
Very cool depiction of one town in Iowa - with photographs of most of the township 20ish years apart. In some ways, I wanted just a little bit more. I loved knowing that everyone was related, but I wanted a little more info on how - maybe a family tree or something? I also wanted a little bit more from the photographer about the inspiration for the project, and the details about the whys. Awesome slice of life - reminded me a bit of Tenino in its charms.
June 26, 2012
Pretty interesting to see the ways people grow older, and in most cases, fatter.
July 8, 2020
The photographer and author really captured the essence of this small community. This work really is an asset to understanding the human condition. It was quite surprising some of the details the residents shared about such personal experiences. Many people shared about the loss of someone close to them, even their own children. The gentleman that appears on the cover was interesting in that he shares that Ashton Kutcher is his cousin and him and Demi had actually made a visit. It also surprised me that he was my husband’s age. He looks much older than my husband, but as the book reveals, the type of life you lead certainly has an effect on your body. I was really taken aback by the amount of time devoted to the creation of this project and feel that it will be a treasure for historians in the future wanting to know what small town life was like in our century.
October 13, 2008
This book is very cool. A guy went to a tiny town in Ohio(?) in the eighties and did portraits of everyone. He combined those with short interviews, and did the whole thing as a touring museum exhibit.
So now, twenty-five years later, same guy goes back to same town, to locate as many of the original people as he can. He re-photographs and re-interviews everyone, and I think it'll be a museum thing again, as well as this book.
Yeah, so it's really really neat. The pictures are wonderful, and the interviews are incredible. There's plenty of the expected small-town jingoistic craziness, but there's also plenty of nice stuff, like great recipes, touching stories about family, thoughts on life. A very cool book.
So now, twenty-five years later, same guy goes back to same town, to locate as many of the original people as he can. He re-photographs and re-interviews everyone, and I think it'll be a museum thing again, as well as this book.
Yeah, so it's really really neat. The pictures are wonderful, and the interviews are incredible. There's plenty of the expected small-town jingoistic craziness, but there's also plenty of nice stuff, like great recipes, touching stories about family, thoughts on life. A very cool book.
December 8, 2008
I wouldn't say that this book was amazing, but the premise of it is quite intriguing. I first heard about it on NPR's list of best books in 2008 and checked out a copy from the library, then thumbed through and read the whole book in one evening. I almost want to take a little vacation to Oxford, Iowa to see how accurate this book's depiction is. :)
December 22, 2008
A fascinating look at the lives of small town residents and how they have changed over 20 years. Many of them have tragic stories to tell. An engrossing book for anyone who's nosy about other people's lives, like I am. Heh.
Glad I don't live there though. As one might expect, ignorance is commonplace. Still, interesting to see how all these lives have entertwined in various ways.
Glad I don't live there though. As one might expect, ignorance is commonplace. Still, interesting to see how all these lives have entertwined in various ways.
October 14, 2009
This is a lovely exercise- Feldstein photographed everyone in his little town, then twenty years later did it again. This large format book has the black and white photos side by side, with little autobiographical paragraphs accompanying most photos. It's a cross-section of small-town America that is both illuminating and touching. Highly recommended.
May 29, 2021
Very interesting book. It covers the life (and sometimes deaths) of residents that live in the small Midwest town of Oxford, Iowa. I would love to go over every single person here but I don't exactly have 20 years to spare. The basic plot is that Stephen Bloom offered photos to every person that wanted a picture of them for free. The word would spread and he was able to photograph every single resident (even babies!) of the town. 676 people in all. 20 years later he would return and check in and retake photos for these people. He would also ask these people about what had changed over 20 years. Some of these were happy, such as the person that found a job in Las Vegas with her husband and was feeling happy after an abusive youth. Or perhaps more sad. Like the person that wishes maybe she could have gone to college instead of marrying her husband. Though many talk about how their lives have changed for better or for worse. I feel like if you're interested in history and just people's lives at a whole. As almost every page has a person and a life story about them.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 22, 2024
I discovered this book by accident. While waiting for my husband to get out of surgery at the University of Iowa in November 2034, I walked the halls. On one long hall I saw a collection of black and white photographs. It was there I learned about The Oxford Project. I had to have this book! It held a coveted place on my coffee table, and it was an intentional, guilty pleasure for me. I finished it today, my first day of retirement. It seems fitting given this book spans generations and is a collection of where people started and where they are (were in 2004). Intimate reflections are shared in this book in a way that causes one to reflect on what their reflection might look like. The book also shares the hidden joys and pains of small town Iowa. The challenges all humans face…the failings and the successes. This is a touching and deeply personal and courageous sharing of lives. Highly recommend a read!
January 15, 2019
This book is stunningly beautiful and informative in a non-intrusive, yet deeply personal way. The residents of Oxford, Iowa are no more special than the next yet, they are infinitely more special than the next. Feldstein captures the people of this small, midwestern town so very beautifully, first in 1984 and later in 2005. I often found myself reading and re-reading the same page over and over and flipping both ahead and back to search for common last names so I could make the connections that bound this stuck-in-time treasure of a town even more tightly.
I’d recommend this book to anyone although I’d be hard pressed to hand over my copy...well, the copy I ordered for myself after I faced the idea of returning this copy to the library!
I’d recommend this book to anyone although I’d be hard pressed to hand over my copy...well, the copy I ordered for myself after I faced the idea of returning this copy to the library!
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April 15, 2020Fascinating, big old coffee table book. In 1984, Feldstein took a photo of every resident of Oxford, Iowa. Twenty years later, he came back to do it again. Bloom put together the text; vignettes of the residents' autobiographies. It's amazing how much they say in just a few sentences. This is a compendium of the people who would ordinarily be seen as unimportant, "flyover" people. This book doesn't attempt to elevate them to celebrity at all, it just showcases them as people. Also, the guy who installed our water softener is in there.
August 29, 2023
I loved this !!
This is a project crafted by a photographer who decided to photograph every person who lived in a small town called Oxford in the 80’s. Thirty years later he photographed the same people in this town and interviewed them. It was so aweing to see these individuals transformation in 30 years, but also to see what they had to say in the little snippet they got to speak about themselves in.
I found this project so inspiring to me as a young photographer myself.
This is such a great coffee book table and conversational piece to have around.
This is a project crafted by a photographer who decided to photograph every person who lived in a small town called Oxford in the 80’s. Thirty years later he photographed the same people in this town and interviewed them. It was so aweing to see these individuals transformation in 30 years, but also to see what they had to say in the little snippet they got to speak about themselves in.
I found this project so inspiring to me as a young photographer myself.
This is such a great coffee book table and conversational piece to have around.
June 21, 2022
A great coffee-table sized book based on a brilliant artistic project! From the photographs and the text, one gets a glimpse into the dreams and deep disappointments of Americans living in a small town in the heartland. It totally explodes our stereotypes--and we come to see each resident as an interesting, complex and very relatable individual.
May 5, 2021
This is tough one to rate. The project was really interesting to me. Many of the stories were very sad, due to lack of resources to make other choices. Photographer must have had great relationship with community in order for people to be willing to be part of this project.
July 20, 2017
Fascinating look into the lives of residents in a small rural town in Iowa.
August 12, 2017
Fascinating photographic project .... such a great idea!
June 29, 2018
my inner sociologist found this to be an incredible study of a small town in Iowa, and it's residents. a fast read, too.
April 15, 2019
Pretty accurate portrait of a tiny town in rural Iowa. Currently sitting on my coffee table.
October 9, 2019
What a cool book. Beautiful photos, stories, and people.
April 1, 2020
3.5 An interesting study of the town of a small rural community over time.
March 9, 2021
Wonderful photo collection showing how people change - and stay the same
March 2, 2024
I love this book sooo much. I wish there was more books like it.
June 9, 2024
Stories and photos about individuals in a small Iowa town? Yes, PLEASE.
December 8, 2025
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
excellent
excellent
Displaying 1 - 30 of 185 reviews