Video: The Oxford Project by Peter Feldstein or 21 Years Later
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
There are projects on which creative individuals work, if not all their lives, then at least half their lives, knowingly knowing how much effort and creative energy and time it will take. But the result and the goal achieved, in most cases, justify and compensate for all the effort and time spent. For example, the American photographer Peter Feldstein has been working on a project for 21 years to photograph the inhabitants of a small town in Iowa and record their life stories, and upon completion of the project to publish the book The Oxford Project Book, which has become a talking portrait of American society.
On a sultry summer day in 1984, photographer Peter Feldstein walked the streets of a small town called Oxford, Iowa, posting advertisements that he would take photographs of every Oxford citizen free of charge. Peter published similar ads on the Internet. At that time, there were only 676 people in the city, and Peter Feldstein wished that none of them missed the lens of his camera. He set up a studio for himself in an empty store. In the first days, only a few junior schoolchildren and pensioners who passed by were photographed. After taking a photo of American Legion member Al Sheets, Peter returned the next day, bringing with him 75 more Legionnaires along with their families. From that moment on, Peter Feldstein's project was in full swing.
Nobody specifically posed, did nothing unusual, did not jump, did not stand on his hands. Only a young resident of Calvin Colony brought his lion pet with him. Usually people were dressed in casual clothes and stood in a normal posture.
After completing the photo shoot, Peter organized an exhibition of the photographs he had taken in Oxford, then hid the negatives in a metal box and went back to teach photography at the University of Iowa.
But 21 years later, Peter pulled out his camera again to continue the unfinished project again. This time, he took with him assistant Stephen G. Bloom, who asked residents to tell only the truth. Listening to life's true stories, Peter and Stephen witnessed the everyday life of ordinary American people. Of course, not everyone who was photographed 21 years ago lived in the city. Someone died, someone moved, but a larger number of residents still lived in that very Oxford. Some of the residents are taller or fatter, some are hunched over, some have grown up, some can no longer walk, but they are still the same men and women who posed for in front of his camera 21 years ago. He managed to take about 100 pictures.
Twenty-one years later, they didn't just pose, they talked about their lives for two decades: the birth of children and the loss of love; about diseases and values in life; about desires and goals; about unfulfilled dreams and simple joys in life. The Oxford Project has become a living portrait of a small town in the United States, whose stories and photographs of its inhabitants, in the past and now, tell the story of true American society - its aspirations, failures and secrets, about how things change, or remain the same over time. …
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