A. Aubrey Bodine photographic prints collection

Photojournalist and photographer A. Aubrey Bodine was born on July 21, 1906, in Baltimore, Maryland, to parents Joel Goode Bodine (1856-1924) and Louise Adele Wilson (1871-1946). He was followed by two siblings, a brother named Seeber and a sister named Ellen. Bodine attended St. Paul’s School for Boys for a brief period of time as a teenager and later attended the Maryland Institute College of Art.

When he turned 14, Bodine began working at the “Baltimore Sun” business office as a messenger boy. He took great interest in the job of the photojournalists and advertisement artists at the newspaper and often followed them while they worked, which is how he learned most of his early photographic techniques. Bodine had his first photograph, an image of the Thomas Viaduct located in Howard County, Maryland, published in the “Sun” in 1923 and he was promoted to commercial photographer the next year. Around this time Bodine also began to successfully enter his prints into competitive salon exhibitions. These salon contests were a place for different artists to submit their work for evaluation and to receive potential prizes or titles. In the late 1930s Bodine went to Europe - visiting France, Germany, and Austria - where he took photos and entered into a few contests. The “Sunday Sun” magazine was created in 1946 and Bodine was named photographic director. He is typically described as a pictorialist, someone who blends reality and artistry in photography. He used the process of combination printing, which is blending together two or more negatives into one final image, as well as applying various tools and dyes to enhance or refine his prints.

Bodine continued to gain notoriety through his featured prints in the “Sun” and the multitude of awards he won from entering contests. His pictures were also showcased in various magazines, including Life and Harper’s Bazaar, and galleries, such as the Baltimore Camera Club. In 1952, Bodine published his first book titled “My Maryland,” which contained photographs of different places around Maryland and a short description of each photo. This was followed by three other books of similar content and layout. Bodine continued to take photographs and worked for the “Sun” up until his death in 1970. He was survived by his wife, Nancy Tait (1913-1991), and daughter Jennifer.