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Digital Cameras - Camcorders - The Oxford Project
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List Price: $50.00
Our Price: $31.47
Your Save: $ 18.53 ( 37% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Welcome Books
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 977.7655
EAN: 9781599620480
ISBN: 1599620480
Label: Welcome Books
Manufacturer: Welcome Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 264
Publication Date: 2008-09-16
Publisher: Welcome Books
Release Date: 2008-09-16
Studio: Welcome Books
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Touching!
Comment: It's an interesting book because it takes place in a little american town and after you read the stories, you realize that that could happen anywhere in the world, it's a universal theme, I mean, the things that occurred in the lives of the ones Mr. Feldstein photographed in 1984. He took their pictures and 20 years later, rephotographed them, the ones who were still in the city. You see a picture of a person on one page and on the next one you have their picture 20 years older. Sometimes you only see the 1984 picture because, as expected, some of the people are not among us anymore. It's very touching documentary photography book because you can see how much of the same things you do, or at least, people in your city ot town do!!! A friend of mine was flabbergasted by the concept of the book. Pictures are average, not much of a lesson in photography but in the power of photography as a tool to tell a story!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Perplexing!
Comment: This book gives you a inside view of a small american town. From the time I opened this book I could not put it down. The people in this book are just like you and me. This is what makes this book special.
Justin
Customer Rating:
Summary: like a modern-day Spoon River Anthology
Comment: This incredibly relevatory account of the Americans of Oxford, Iowa, reminds me of Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River Anthology". The pared-down text reads like poetry, intensely meaningful. The simple and stark pictures, both portraits and landscapes of the town and surrounding countryside, will grip your attention. Reading and looking through this book will reward you with the experience of stepping into the living rooms and workplaces of the people and getting to know them intimately, as they know each other.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Oxford Project
Comment: I first read about this book and thought it was an interesting concept. It was fascinating to see the changes or lack of in each persons apprearance 20 yrs later and to read about that person.
Customer Rating:
Summary: We're far more interesting that I thought.
Comment: The folks that are the subject of this book, although I'm from southern Minnesota, are the people I know, everyone of them. From the Vets who march in the parades I go to, to the women who pour my coffee in the local restaurants. These little, sometimes stunningly candid descriptions of their lives are at least as impressive as the photos. I guess I'll correct that first sentence. I thought I knew them. I know them much better now, and I also like them more than I did. And as a result I feel better about my own life and theirs. Actually, I should give it 4 stars for being too short, but I just can't.
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.
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