The Oxford Project-Photos and Stories Of Working Class Americans

I have been meaning to write about this story…

A small rural town in Oxford, Iowa, 20 years ago, pictures where taken. And those pictures turned into The Oxford Project. Peter Feldstein and Stephen G. Bloom combined residents’ photos and oral histories to tell the town’s story. It could be any small town in America.

The first pictures where taken in 1984. Peter Feldstein, and Stephen G. Bloom combined residents’ photos and oral histories to tell the town’s story. By 1984 summers end, the University of Iowa arts professor had photographed 670 people, six shy of the whole town.
They where then displayed at the American Legion. Then tucked away to be destroyed by a flood. The negatives however were stuffed in boxes missed the floods.

Two decades later, Peter Feldstein begins to rephotograph as many people as he could find from 1984. Bringing with him Stephen G. Bloom, a University of Iowa journalism professor, to interview the residents and record their life histories.

Instead of Elections and power figures, this book tells the lives and secrets of rural America, the working class. It could be any town, it could have even been yours or any where in the world.

When Stephen Bloom was asked what he got from the experience, he replied, “I walked away from this knowing that life turns on a dime. I realized that life is really dependent on moments, and you don’t know when those moments are going to take place when you wake up. And sometimes when you go to sleep at night, you don’t realize those moments have taken place…”

CNN News has a nice selection of photos from this project. If you click on the pictures, it will show you then and now…the second link in this sentence, are pictures of the town people and of the town.

~The Baby Boomer Queen~

If the The Oxford Project got your attention, like it did mine…the book is below in the Widget…

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