The Oxford Project at the Des Moines Art Center

Twenty-some years ago, artist/teacher Peter Feldstein followed through on a notion to photograph each resident in his new-found home of Oxford, Iowa. Two decades later the townspeople came before Feldstein’s camera once again, this time telling their stories to University of Iowa collegue Stephen G. Bloom. The result - a photo-and-text exhibition entitled “The Oxford Project: Who We Are” - is a candid look into the effects on time on a community.

Sixteen sets of Feldstein’s photographs and Bloom’s texts are now on display at the Des Moines Art Center (through April 29), as part of the Oxford project, which has been profiled in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine and on ABC World News Tonight. The attention comes as a welcome surprise considering the project’s humble beginnings.

During the summer of 1984, University of Iowa professor Peter Feldstein hoped to convince Oxford’s entire population of 673 into sitting for a free portraits. Feldstein had been inspired by Arkansas artist Mike Meyer (also known as Mike Disfarmer), famous for snapshots of his neighbors taken in the 1940s.

Homemade signs and word-of-mouth publicity slowly brought the townspeople in. By summer’s end, Feldstein had photographed 670 Oxford residents, each dressed in come-as-you-are fashion with no posing or photographer-supplied props. The collected photos were kept on display for a time, then filed away, almost forgotten. Until recent years.

In 2005, Feldstein asked U of I colleague and writer Stephen G. Bloom to join him in revisiting the Oxford project. Bloom’s job was to capture the story of each resident returning for a photo.

Once again word spread in the small town of Oxford and over 100 participants returned for a second portrait. Many shared poignant personal stories from the intervening 21 years, causing Bloom to postulate, “Two decades is a long time. Or is it? People change. Or do they? Peter’s time-lapse photographs pose those questions, and they remind us of who we dreamed we would become and who we turned out to be.”
Guest Author: Brenda Friedrich

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