The Oxford Project: Who We Are
by Stephen G. Bloom

ONE BREEZY MAY MORNING IN 1984, photographer Peter Feldstein walked up and down every street in Oxford, Iowa, slipping flyers under doors, inviting residents to have their photographs taken. Using a fat red marker and a big piece of cardboard, he made a sign that read "Free Pictures," and taped the sign to a storefront window on Augusta Avenue, Oxford's main street. Inside, Peter covered the plate-glass windows with aluminum foil and brown kraft paper to keep out the sunlight, hung a wrinkled construction tarp as a backdrop, and turned on two 1000-watt quartz lights. Then he waited.
Six hundred and seventy-six people lived in Oxford, and Peter wanted to photograph every single one of them.

That first day, almost twenty-five years ago, no one showed up. For the next several days, Peter's only takers were kids on their way home from school, probably happy for an excuse not to do their homework. Then, a curious, retired couple wandered by, and became the first adults Peter photographed. In the weeks that followed, fewer than a dozen people poked their heads in the storefront. At the end of every afternoon, Peter printed contact sheets of the few photographs he'd taken, and placed them in a notebook on a table outside so passers-by could flip through the pages.

On Memorial Day, Peter got his first break. That morning, Al Scheetz stopped in to have his picture taken on his way to march in the American Legion parade. He returned a few hours later with four-dozen Legionnaires and their families. The project took off from there.

Peter never posed anyone or asked them to dress up. He took one shot per person. Few did anything out of the ordinary—except those like Clarence Schropp, who wore his wife's wig, and Calvin Colony who brought along his three-hundred-pound pet lion, Samantha. Most came as they were—nothing more, nothing less. Pat Henkelman showed up carrying a sack of groceries.

By late summer, Peter had photographed six hundred and seventy Oxford residents.

If you ask Peter why he wanted to photograph his neighbors in the rural town of Oxford, he'll tell you it was a social experiment, a way to give equal, democratic billing to every single resident—rich or poor, young or old, respected or reviled. Peter's intention was to take straightforward pictures with no pretense, to make an honest record. He was inspired by the humble post-Depression portraits of Mike Disfarmer who photographed the townspeople of Heber Springs, Arkansas, as well as by the work of Doug Huebler, a conceptual artist whose idea was to photograph every person in the world. The pictures of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans also figured heavily among his influences.

That spring Peter had an exhibition of the photographs in Oxford's American Legion Hall. A few hundred people stopped by; the show was covered by some of the local papers. Father James Lawrence of St. Mary's Church, the last resident to pose for Peter, told a reporter: "He sure stirred up a lot of talk. There are a lot of nice people in this town. Some of them are a little embarrassed, but I think they really like it." After the show, Peter put the negatives away in an old set of metal file drawers, and went on with his life as a professor of art at the University of Iowa. And that was pretty much that.

Until 2005.

That's when Peter decided to set up his camera again to take photographs of as many of the original residents as he could find. More than a hundred had died, and probably as many had moved away. But the vast majority still lived in Oxford. Including Peter. For this go-around, he followed the same protocol as in 1984, with two notable exceptions: He asked people to stand in front of a blank plaster wall across the street from the original storefront; and he invited me to join him in the project to tell Oxford's stories.

After photographing the first handful of residents, Peter and I looked at the new portraits alongside the old, and we were stunned. Almost all had posed in an identical manner despite the more than two-decade interval. Mary Ann Carter, co-owner of the local Ford dealership, still tilted her head just a little to the left, her hands cupped neatly at her side. Retired carpenter Jim Jiras still wore a seed cap and carried two pens in his shirt pocket.

Over the course of the next two years, with Peter sitting in, I interviewed one hundred Oxford residents, one at a time. Armed with several pens and a pad on a clipboard—I never used a tape recorder—I asked few questions and mostly listened, allowing people to talk freely. Initially, I was surprised that people were so forthcoming. After all, they knew Peter, but I was a stranger. More than I would have expected broke down in tears and confessed life stories seldom acknowledged. Many talked about relationships gone bad. Several revealed they were victims of domestic abuse or had weathered infidelities. A few exaggerated facts, boasting about events that I doubt ever occurred. A number of people confided great regrets and profound sorrows. Often their words came out slowly and methodically, other times they poured forth in jags and torrents. The language of not just a few was pure poetry.

After each interview, I typed up my notes and compressed each text into its final shortened form—"shrink wrapping" is how I describe the process, squeezing out the excess air—and we'd show what I had written to the person. Despite the private nature of our conversations, rarely did anyone choose to retract his or her words. I'd like to think Oxford people spoke so openly because there's comfort in talking about what burdens us. Or perhaps it was just the first time anyone outside of their families had asked. Whatever their reasons, they wanted to share their stories. The more Peter and I listened, the more we realized we'd become confessors to an unheard and invisible America.


FOUNDED IN 1856, Oxford was a mail stop, first for stagecoaches, then for trains. In a contest to name the town, a little boy, Fred Cotter, drew slips of paper from a hat, and when "Oxford" was picked—to the pleasure of Mrs. W.H. Cotter, who had submitted the name because she had grown up in New York's Oxford Township—it stuck. By 1880, Oxford boasted eight hundred and ninety-one residents, five general stores, three hardware stores, two drug stores, three hat stores, two newspapers, three hotels, three churches, two undertakers, three physicians, four blacksmiths, and even an opera house. During Prohibition, the town was home to six rowdy saloons that somehow the local sheriff's office managed to overlook. Oxford's biggest claim to fame took place on September 18, 1948, when President Harry Truman passed through Oxford by train and stopped to give a five-minute speech.

By the time Interstate 80 was built and connected Oxford with Iowa City in the early 1960s, much of Main Street was closed down. Oxford is only sixteen miles from of the University of Iowa, a lively place (particularly for Iowa and especially on Saturdays after a Hawkeye football game), but it might as well be five hundred miles. Stroll down Augusta Avenue today, and chances are you won't see another person or even a passing pick-up.


This is not an uncommon small-town story. Much of rural America is dying. The median age is on the rise, as new generations seek metropolitan alternatives. Yet, step off the empty streets and inside the modest houses that line Oxford's Wilson or Nemora streets and you will still find a vital assortment of families and individuals, old timers and even a few newcomers, that continue to make their homes there.

Despite its withered exterior, Oxford, and the countless towns like it across the United States, continue to hold fiercely to their roots. They remain, in many ways, like large protective families, insulated and untouched by the energy and vulgarity of urban America. Oxford's still the kind of place where drivers don't put on their turn signals because everyone knows where everyone else is going. Almost everyone's phone number starts with the same prefix (828). Dinner and supper are two different meals. Everybody knows what a mudroom is—and has one. The word elevator more commonly refers to a device that raises and lowers grain, not people. These are the kinds of characteristics and customs that have always defined rural communities, and they continue to endure.

THE PASSAGE OF TIME TAKES ITS TOLL. Life transforms us. In addition to inexorable signs of aging, our appearances change because of large and small tragedies. Hiccups to our health and happiness make an impact. Iowa's harsh winters and scorching summers do, too. Electric smiles have ripened into middle-aged frowns. Full heads of hair are now thin and gray. But in these time-lapse photographs, there are also Oxford men and women who have blossomed, just coming into their own. Some sparkle with possibility and exuberance.

Peter's portraits of the residents of Oxford and their own deeply felt words combine to create a national portrait of overlooked triumphs and travails. In the faces and voices of these strangers, we grow to understand ourselves better. They remind us of who we dreamed we would become, and who we turned out to be.

OXFORD TRUISMS Every small town has its own quirks, traditions, and conventions. Oxford is no exception. The names Grabin, Jiras, Hennes, and Portwood are as common in Oxford as Garcia, Lee, Chen, and Cohen are in big cities. Almost everyone in town seems related because, if you go back far enough, they are—either by birth, marriage, or both. Naming all your children with the same first letter is not uncommon. Living more than ten miles away from where you grew up makes you exceptional. Backdoors are how you almost always enter a house. Religion is fundamental—whether it's Catholicism, Mormonism, Lutheranism, Evangelical Christianity, or Buddhism. But going to a house of worship is optional. Bar fights are not a weekly occurrence, but neither are they an infrequent activity. Alcohol and alcoholism figure in many residents' lives, and to a lesser degree, so does mental illness. Collecting is a popular pastime—from lamps and figurines to tractors and engines. Food is of great significance, as are recipes. Kolatches (Czech pastries) and Red Waldorf cake are popular desserts. Meat (meatloaf, steak, pork chops) and potatoes are king. Sliced deer meat cooked in cream-of-mushroom soup, square meal hamburger, and biscuit dough squares are also favorites. Everyone has the same no-fail pie crust recipe, but no one can remember where it came from. Driving a semi is a dream held by not just a few men in town. Pickups and cars tell a lot about the driver, as well as about the women who admire them. Hats are essential. Pliers and pocketknives are necessary tools; many men won't leave home without them. Travel is O.K., but living in the big city brings all kinds of headaches, and is not recommended. Alaska is a dream vacation destination. Deer may be pleasant to look at, and their racks (antlers) treasured, but deer can also be deadly. Almost everyone has hit a deer with a pickup or car at least once. Farming is a dangerous livelihood. Losing digits and limbs is a risk that goes with the job. Mushrooming, deer hunting, fishing, gardening, scrap booking, and playing bingo and euchre are popular ways to pass the time (and meet suitors, single or married.) Oxford residents have lots of pets—dogs, cats, goats, hens, raccoons, rabbits, lions, ponies, horses, burrows, and peacocks. Having children is important, although marriage is not a prerequisite to parenthood. A person's life can drastically change by stopping off for a drink at a local bar. If you're not an Oxford native, you'll never be a local, even if you live there for fifty years. Few residents have been to college. Many say it's their biggest regret in life. When someone dies in Oxford, big funerals are expected, as are casseroles.

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