A famous juxtaposition of colleges, punts, and dreaming spires, Oxford is truly unique. Underneath that stereotype, though, it is readily recognizable in countless layers of human experience, all equally part of the whole. There is also a working class driving the city, the colleges, museums, restaurants, libraries, enabling it all to function. There are endless tourists, daily navigating an ever-growing resident homeless population. The entitled, the austere, and everything in between. Cigarette butts and graffiti, cranes and scaffolding, abandoned clothing and introspective meats. Quiet dignity, youthful arrogance, and soulful rendering. Hopelessness alongside hope. In its own way, it is civilization, as anywhere. 

Name notwithstanding, The Lunchtime Portraits, individually, are not only photographs taken at midday. While many of the photographs do occur at lunchtime (when I was most often free to observe), any adequate portrait of a town could never be restricted to a single hour of the day. The painter in the shop doorway was taken in the morning on my walk to work. The tourist photographing the Sheldonian Theatre is backlit by an evening sun. In the end, the casual designation became the name for what are, inherently, moments that cried out to be photographed, photos that presented themselves to me, all taken in the spaces between obligations. In my process, I never pose or manufacture. Although I try to avoid it, I will occasionally have conversations with my subjects if I perceive that the interaction will facilitate a photograph.

As recent history as this seems, a pandemic and two years of relative isolation have ensured that this is a picture of what once was. There are no masks in these photos. No medical masks, at least. People commune, dine, hug, crowd, huddle. Interactions are met only with normal degree of amity or distrust. Now, the world has suffered. Disease and fear have recently reigned, and social contracts have changed. There is a new normal. This work, originally intended to be a documentary of the times, became historically relevant before its time. I offer it as my humble contribution to our collective memory.

David Stumpp, Rare Books Librarian, Christ Church Library