Gretchen Frank, a senior deckhand at Casco Bay Lines, is one of the Portland working people photographed for Tom Bloom’s Portland Works project. Photo by Tom Bloom Gretchen Frank has spent 30 years working on Portland’s waterfront, for Casco Bay Lines. So she’s met a lot of different kinds of people.
Still, she didn’t know what to make of photographer Tom Bloom, who came up to her one day and said he’d like to take her portrait. At first she resisted the idea, mostly because she didn’t know him, at all. Then she went online to see his website, where he had started a project called Portland Works , including photographs of working folks from all around the city.
Plus, she saw a few people among the portraits she knew. So she decided to pose for Bloom. “Once I saw what he was doing, I thought it was a great idea,” said Frank, 50, of Windham.
“It’s nice to have people who fly under the radar get recognition.” Medical assistant Joelle Nzeloka, posed holding her 1-month-old son, Kellyiam, and wearing clothes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo by Tom Bloom Bloom’s Portland Works exhibit is currently on view at the Portland International Jetport through February 2026.
It features 36 black and white portraits of a wide range of people and occupations, including construction workers, a mason, a firefighter, a teacher, a hospital worker, a plumber, a woodworker, a welder, a postal worker, a barber and a librarian. There are also people who are not nece.