I used to work for Peter Feldstein in the mid 1990s to help him manage a computer lab for the arts. His work is top-notch and he’s the nicest guy you could ever work for, so it’s great to see him get some well-deserved media attention [1]. His Oxford Project, listed in the Yahoo! most popular news stories today [2], humanizes a part of the world that some people will never be exposed to; it is a brilliant ethnographic tool.
In the current phase of his project, Feldstein has added a new twist, thanks to the help of friend Stephen Bloom, an author and journalism professor at the University of Iowa. Based on interviews, Bloom has crafted short narratives that lend a confessional, poetic and unvarnished dimension to the lives in Feldstein’s then-and-now portraits.
Way to go Peter! I really like reviewing the photos and I wonder if facial recognition technology would accurately predict the changes.
[1] Examples of recent stories:
- NY Times
- Des Moines Register
- ABC
- KCRG (Cedar Rapids ABC)
- Smithsonian Magazine
- BoingBoing (no real value, just Smithsonian regurgitated, but hey that’s what “BoingBoing” means, right?)
- North Dakota Quarterly
- Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know (radio)
I expect to see it on the Colbert Report or Daily Show soon.
[2] The BBC has “related” links and other helpful segues on their news pages, but for some reason Yahoo! does not even suggest than there might be an official project website. BoingBoing had to be told by a reader that they should link to the project site, but at least they did so. All very strange, considering the basic concept of hyperlinking versus traditional text…