Historically, the textile industry has been a driving force behind the United States economy, but several decades of overseas competition, unequal trade policies, and a flood of cheaper imports have decimated American factories. Since 1990, job losses in apparel and textile manufacturing have been greater than those in any other type of manufacturing.
In 2010, I stumbled upon an old yarn mill in Maine, filled with vintage machinery, that reminded me of the state hospital workshops I had photographed for my book, Asylum. While those workshops had long been abandoned, this textile mill was fully operational, a scene from the past miraculously coexisting with the present. I returned to the mill several times to take pictures, and from conversations with employees, learned of other mills in New England, still functioning as they had for decades, using anachronistic techniques and equipment.
When I ventured down South, where the textile industry eventually migrated because of less costly labor, I found a different scene entirely: enormous mill complexes that were clean, efficient, and largely automated. Here the industry still thrives, albeit at a fraction of the volume it once produced, largely because the remaining factories have modernized in order to stay competitive in a global marketplace. Though they are bound by a common history to their Northern forebears, there is little resemblance otherwise.
My goal for this project is to document what remains of the textile industry in the North and South, by bridging the past with the present to show how it has changed, and what its future may hold.
I also hope to pay tribute to the undervalued segment of Americans workers who labor in this manufacturing sector. They are a cross section of young and old, skilled and unskilled, recent immigrants and veteran employees, some of whom have spent their entire working lives in a single factory. Together, they share a quiet pride and dignity, and are proof that manual labor and craftsmanship still have value in the 21st century US economy.
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