July 3, 2019 — The American Folklife Center (AFC) is excited to be featuring “Working on the Waterfront,” a documentary display of photographs created by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center in New Bedford.
The display, which is located in Room LJ-G53 on the ground floor of the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C., is open to the public through October.
In 2016, the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center received a prestigious Archie Green Fellowship from the American Folklife Center to document workers on the New Bedford waterfront for AFC’s Occupational Folklife Project (OFP).
The OFP is an ongoing research initiative to record the lives, careers, and experiences of contemporary workers in a wide range of trades and occupations throughout the United States.
Under the direction of NBFHC Executive Director Laura Orleans, funds from the competitive fellowship were used to hire researchers to record oral histories and photograph almost 60 workers involved in diverse fishing-related trades and occupations on the New Bedford waterfront.