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Many labor-related stories of Maine people remain untold. An exhibit at Maine MILL expands the story of people working in Maine, and the story of their work— seen and unseen.

Read the story: ‘Unseen Hands: The Hidden Elements of Labor’ reveals the people behind the Lewiston-Auburn’s labor legacy

Over 300 photos were laid out by hand and repeated several times to form panels thematically, with sections focused on Black labor, child labor, union labor, unpaid labor, and women’s domestic labor.

Children offered some one of the “unseen hands” of labor in Maine in the late 1800s and early 1900s and are part of the exhibit at the Maine MILL in Lewiston.

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It’s part of an exhibit called “Unseen Hands” on display through December.

It is common to see women in the many photographs of Maine workers on display in the exhibit.

Photos of workers in Maine from the 1900s combine with memorabilia to tell the story of the seen and unseen hands of labor on display at the Maine MILL in the Bates Mill Complex in Lewiston.
Photos of workers in Maine were painstakingly laid out on panels representing different types of labor in an exhibit at Maine MILL in Lewiston.
Photos on a series of panels at the Maine MILL help tell the story of Maine’s labor force in the early 1900s.

A lifelong resident of Lewiston, Russ stumbled into photography as a college student working toward a career in psychology. His great-grandfather Louis B. Costello was the publisher of the Lewiston Daily...

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