"I opened the book for a quick browse and read it from cover to cover before I realized it was nearly three in the morning on a school night, but a more temperate reader would likely enjoy flipping through a section or even opening it to a random page. Photo majors, and anyone else interested in the human condition, should not miss The Oxford Project."
—DCAD (Delaware College of Art & Design)
"For my Creative Writing students the portraits in The Oxford Project really are worth a thousand words. When used as writing prompts, the transformative nature of the portraits help my students practice crafting characters. The portraits have also inspired my students to bring in portraits of themselves as children which they use to spark pieces of writing that explore connections between the yesterday of their childhood and the today of their teen years. This year students will use the Oxford Project as a template to create their own Oxford Project that focuses on the childhood portrait of a relative or neighbor they know who is from an older generation."
"
The country singer Tom T. Hall is said to have remarked, 'Some people can
fly around the world and not see anything, and some people can walk around
the block and see everything.' The Oxford Project invites us to see
everything in a place so small some might expect to find nothing. The book
can do the same for our students; it can prepare them to discover the beauty
and complexity in their communities and in themselves. Teachers at any level
can have students create their own Oxford Projects—from interviewing and
photographing staff at a high school to capturing the faces and stories in a
community gathering place. With The Oxford Project as a lens and you as
the guide, students can see what they always see—in a whole new way."
—David Engen, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Communication Studies, Minnesota State University, Mankato
"...It's alive, this book, and I for one felt more alive after reading it...an astute blend of text and image...The book is full of surprises, full of
people you might not expect to meet in a small farm town hundreds of miles
west of Chicago..."
"In the age of the emotionally seducing docu-drama...The Oxford Project is sustenance that satisfies a hunger among contemporary documentarians - a
hunger composed of this: Tell me straight what you saw and what you heard...The Oxford Project reports and performs...beautifully...poetically...Through image and text, photographer Feldstein and author Bloom have rooted their work in the expressive hopes, dreams, and candidly revealed failures and regrets of their subjects..."
—Martin Desht, Photo Review magazine
"The Oxford Project is like a still-life documentary, a narrative about change. This huge, handsome book, with its gatefold photographs, its maps and memories, offers a fascinating piece of contemporary history, a treasure of social and cultural commentary"
—Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
"The book is at once strikingly intimate and expansive. The townspeople of Oxford do little to hide themselves from Feldstein or Bloom; they look directly at the camera, and their words are as open as their gazes. They own their lives- every wrinkle, every pound, every joy, every sorrow- and share them as freely as they would a cup of sugar with a neighbor [...] It's both personal and historical, which makes Feldstein's achievement doubly absorbing and doubly affecting"
—Robert Faires, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
"... the real deal—a picture that is honest, gripping, and incredibly moving"
—Black and White Magazine
"His book is a time capsule that offers the reader a unique glimpse of the changing face of life in small town America and I'm certain that it will make a fine addition to your personal library"
—C.A. Boylan, Shutterbug
"... more than a coffee-table book. Its like a nonfiction, illustrated version of 'Our Town'"
—Jed Gottlieb, BostonHerald.com
"...a stunning, alternatively inspiring and heartbreaking, work that will prove to be an enduring portrait of an America in transition"
—Erin Adair-Hodges, New Mexico Alibi
"...turning the pages is like rifling through a time capsule, or perhaps a forgotten archive in a small-town library. The book's many gatefolds enhance the sensation of discovery. Oxford's residents rise up from the book's pages and hidden nooks, some with vigor"
—Eliza Honey, The New Yorker
"Not The Iowan, but Iowans. Americans. Humans. Six hundred and seventy of them [...] a captivating mix of formats sensitively presents Feldstein's black and white still portraits as emotionally moving pictures of full-color lives and the community they call home"
—Adele Ver Steeg, The Iowan
"The residents of Oxford come alive because of the now and then photographs interspersed with brief yet revealing text in their own words"
—Steve Weinberg, The Denver Post
"a spellbinding portrait of small-town life and the passage of time....The pictures and names function as a key to the town; you can track the silk strands that make up the intricate web of small-town life. The context is layered and rich..."
—Christina Capecchi, Minnesota Post
"taken slowly and allowed to unfold (much like the project itself), The Oxford Project has much to reveal and does so beautifully"
—Rob Cline, Corridor Buzz
"Here are the people of Oxford, paired with themselves in an eerie and beautiful reckoning with the past"
—Hank Stuever, The Washington Post
"The result is a book of words and images that inform each other, deeply resonant stories that remind us of our own lives—what we longed to be, and who we became"
—Emily Grosvenor, Art Scene
"More than 20 years ago, photographer Peter Feldstein took on the project of photographing everyone who lived in the tiny (as in 676 people) Oxford, Iowa. The result is the illuminating and very human The Oxford Project"
—Mary Chandler, Rocky Mountain News
"The book is at once strikingly intimate and expansive...[The Oxford Project has] the sweeping scope and power of Our Town or Spoon River Anthology. It's both personal and historical, which makes Feldstein's achievement doubly absorbing and doubly affecting."
—The Austin Chronicle
"The Oxford Project is an extraordinary undertaking and a fascinating book. These magnificent and poignant photos and oral histories make for a can't-put-it-down read, and prove that the stories we find all around us are the most interesting and important of all. You'll be awed by the poetry in the words, dreams and faces of Oxford Iowa."
—Dave Isay, Founder of StoryCorps, recipient of a 2008 MacArthur Fellowship
"To stumble upon a small town like Oxford is one thing—to be able to consider its whole
population face by face, at your own leisure, is something else entirely."
—From the Preface by Gerald Stern
"These photographs and stories are American documentary work at its finest."
—Dale Maharidge, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of And Their Children After Them: The Legacy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
"I had heard about The Oxford Project. The premise was certainly interesting, but nothing had prepared me for viewing the actual pages. Schwartz Bookshops immediately decided to get behind it in a big way and make it our featured title for the season.
A coffee table book that will lead to many discussions, The Oxford Project is also a book to read cover to cover. It is a record of humanity during the last years of the 20th century. Everyone will find something of themselves in the people of Oxford."
—Nancy Quinn, Marketing Director, Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops, Milwaukee
"The arresting lenticular photograph on the cover of this book is a boy, Hunter Tandy in 1984 and as a man in 2005. The diversity of human experiences is engrossing and the photos are captivating. This is an American small town's story but also the story of American lives. Humane, poignant but also a work of art, The Oxford Project deserves to be in every library and home to remind us of who our neighbors are."
—Catherine Wallberg, Buyer, Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops, Milwaukee
"The black and white photographs in this oversized book are stunning and even though the before and after photos are sure to grab your attention, it's the life stories attached to them that will keep you turning pages."
—Salisbury Post
