A. Aubrey Bodine (1906–1970) was an American photographer and photojournalist for the Baltimore Sun's Sunday Sun Magazine, also known as the brown section, for fifty years. Bodine is known for his images of Maryland landmarks and traditions.
Aubrey Bodine's photographic career began in 1923 when as an office boy with the Baltimore Sun he submitted photographs of the Thomas Viaduct at Relay to the editor of the Sunday paper, and they were published. From first to last Aubrey Bodine was a newspaperman covering all sorts of stories with his camera - news events, famous people, unusual places and curious activities. This gave him opportunities to travel throughout the region and learn about it in every tide, wind, weather and season. Out of this experience came remarkable documentary pictures of farming, oystering, hunting, soap boiling, blacksmithing, clock making, bricklaying and dozens of other occupations, and student nurses, Amish children, pilots of ships and planes, country folk and city folk, wood sheds and cathedrals, wagons and railroad engines, and, in short, almost everything of interest. Moreover, the documentary pictures are of the very finest quality, often artistic in design and lighting effects far beyond the usual standard of newspaper work.
But Bodine's talent ran deeper than this, and so did his ambition. He submitted photographs to national and international salon competitions and consistently won top honors. Bodine believed that photography could be a creative discipline, and he studied the principles of art at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The camera and the dark room equipment were tools to him like the painter's brush or the sculptor's chisel.
Bodine was a romantic pictorialist and this shows in his choice of subjects - the old times and the old things, the beauties of nature, man as an individual, and similar ideas. The pictures are usually quiet in mood partly because of the subdued tones and partly because of a low tension design made of open curves and natural perspective.
Not the least of Bodine's artistic ability was his craftsmanship. He was always experimenting with his tools, but seldom made a mistake. Some of his best pictures were literally composed in the viewfinder of the camera. In other cases he worked on the negative with dyes and intensifiers, pencil marking, and even scraping to produce the effect he had in mind. He added clouds photographically, and made other even more elaborate manipulations. Bodine's rationale for all these technical alterations of the natural scene was simply that, like the painter, he worked from the model and selected those features which suited his sense of mood, proportion and design. The picture was the thing, not the manner of arriving at it.
© 2018. All images are copyrighted © by A. Aubrey Bodine or assignee. The use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained.
Aubrey Bodine's photographic career began in 1923 when as an office boy with the Baltimore Sun he submitted photographs of the Thomas Viaduct at Relay to the editor of the Sunday paper, and they were published. From first to last Aubrey Bodine was a newspaperman covering all sorts of stories with his camera - news events, famous people, unusual places and curious activities. This gave him opportunities to travel throughout the region and learn about it in every tide, wind, weather and season. Out of this experience came remarkable documentary pictures of farming, oystering, hunting, soap boiling, blacksmithing, clock making, bricklaying and dozens of other occupations, and student nurses, Amish children, pilots of ships and planes, country folk and city folk, wood sheds and cathedrals, wagons and railroad engines, and, in short, almost everything of interest. Moreover, the documentary pictures are of the very finest quality, often artistic in design and lighting effects far beyond the usual standard of newspaper work.
But Bodine's talent ran deeper than this, and so did his ambition. He submitted photographs to national and international salon competitions and consistently won top honors. Bodine believed that photography could be a creative discipline, and he studied the principles of art at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The camera and the dark room equipment were tools to him like the painter's brush or the sculptor's chisel.
Bodine was a romantic pictorialist and this shows in his choice of subjects - the old times and the old things, the beauties of nature, man as an individual, and similar ideas. The pictures are usually quiet in mood partly because of the subdued tones and partly because of a low tension design made of open curves and natural perspective.
Not the least of Bodine's artistic ability was his craftsmanship. He was always experimenting with his tools, but seldom made a mistake. Some of his best pictures were literally composed in the viewfinder of the camera. In other cases he worked on the negative with dyes and intensifiers, pencil marking, and even scraping to produce the effect he had in mind. He added clouds photographically, and made other even more elaborate manipulations. Bodine's rationale for all these technical alterations of the natural scene was simply that, like the painter, he worked from the model and selected those features which suited his sense of mood, proportion and design. The picture was the thing, not the manner of arriving at it.
© 2018. All images are copyrighted © by A. Aubrey Bodine or assignee. The use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained.
 |
| Mr A. Aubrey Bodine |
 |
| 1928, Handling produce on Light street |
 |
| 1933, J. Benjamin Ayres, left, and H.G. Murray, right, are busy repairing toys at the Good Will Industries shop |
 |
| 1934, The “Philadelphia” (affectionately known as “Smoky Joe”), a ferry that traveled between Baltimore and Love Point on Kent Island, pulls in to Pier 5 off Light street during a 1934 snowstorm |
 |
| 1935, Construction of the Orleans Street viaduct seen from the Standard Oil Building |
 |
| 1936, Bethlehem Steel Company |
 |
| 1936, Straw hats on display at the Charcol Club gallery |
 |
| 1939, Bethlehem Steel Company's Sparrow Point plant |
 |
| 1941, Mount Vernon Place |
 |
| 1942, Bethlehem Steel workers celebrate a triple launching |
 |
| 1942, Light Street at Pratt as it looked during a flood in 1942 |
 |
| 1944, Mrs. Emma Robinson prays at Parkside Methodist Church |
 |
| 1944, Training of Merchant Seamen |
 |
| 1945, The cigarette line at Guilford and Fayette Streets |
 |
| 1945, VE DAY - Newspapers sold for 5 cents at Park Avenue and Lexington Street |
 |
| 1946, Eclipse photographed in a time lapse sequence shown with the Washington Monument in the foreground as it passes over Baltimore |
 |
| 1946, Serge N. Benson landing a rainbow trout in Hunting Creek |
 |
| 1946, The City Dock in Annapolis |
 |
| 1947, The Henn quads have their picture taken at St. Angnes Hospital when they are nine months old |
 |
| 1948, Oyster Tonger |
 |
| 1948, Raking Clams |
 |
| 1948, The longest block in Baltimore, 2600 Wilkens Avenue |
 |
| 1949, Misty morning duck hunting on the Patuxent River |
 |
| 1949, October fields in Baltimore County |
 |
| 1950, St. Clementes Island |
 |
| 1951, Contour Plowing on York Road farm |
 |
| 1952, "Gentle People" Amish girls in St. Mary's County |
 |
| 1952, The Bay Bridge nears completion |
 |
| 1953, Warren Hudgins steers a boat to fishing grounds |
 |
| 1954, Lafayette Courts housing development from Central and Fayette Streets |
 |
| 1954, Locust Point |
 |
| 1955, Ten Thousand Vinegar Barrels |
 |
| 1955, A housing development in the Dundalk area |
 |
| 1955, Bow Canada from Oslo in the upper Patapsco Basin Sugar Refinery and Procter and Gamble in background |
 |
| 1955, Chesapeake Bay Bridge |
 |
| 1956, Come darkness, electric light takes the place of the sun and the port's work goes right ahead. Here, sections of the harbor tunnel are being put together at the Maryland Ship Building plant, Fairfield |
 |
| 1957, Baltimore Harbor |
 |
| 1957, Bridge #7 halfway between Alvarado and Wautaga |
 |
| 1957, Harvey Ladew trims up a swan in his garden |
 |
| 1957, The Great Wye Oak |
 |
| 1959, A view from the bridge of the Liberian tanker African Queen |
 |
| 1959, John H. Glenn, Jr., Virgil J. Grissom, Alan B. Shepard, Jr., and Malcolm S. Carpenter. They are looking at model of capsule |
 |
| 1959, The Duke and Duchess of Windsor visit Maryland |
 |
| 1959, Their unusual shapes accentuated by the snow striping their sides |
 |
| 1960, five men watching two others play checkers |
 |
| 1960, Longshoremen unload rubber at the B&O Railroad's pier at Locust Point |
 |
| 1962, One of two identical apartment houses at 20th street after the storm |
 |
| 1963, Dorothy Lamour at her home in Parkton, MD |
 |
| 1964, Construction on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel |
 |
| 1965, Girl in a Hurry |
 |
| 1966, Down by Crisfield docks, Dewey London opens clams for the Ward brothers |
 |
| 1970, There are many decorative lions through the city, some of which probably look familiar to you |
 |
| Glass Blowing |
 |
| Historic gas lamps of Baltimore |
 |
| Ice Manufacturing Plant |
 |
| State Window Cleaning and Acme Janitor Service |
 |
| Tooth Brush Inspector |
No comments:
Post a Comment