Henry Rinn photograph collection

Henry Rinn, Jr. (1861-1951) was a Baltimore photographer. Beginning his adult life as a cigar maker, he later operated a music store on Columbia Ave., selling sheet music and musical instruments, as well as giving lessons in mandolin, guitar, and banjo.

Rinn began his photographic career as a contract photographer for the Hughes Company, shooting Baltimore buildings. He developed his business on a mean budget at first, with only a 5 x 7 view camera, tripod, supply of sensitized plates, and a developing tank; he had no enlarger or printer, and his darkroom was a tightly shuttered bedroom.

By the early 1900s, Rinn began making photographic postcards of Baltimore scenes, especially parks, monuments, steamships in the harbor, amusement parks and vacation resorts. The postcards were sold in drugstores for a penny apiece, or six for a nickel. By 1903, he was producing the cards for wholesale, operating in quarters at 423 Courtland Street. In the Baltimore Fire of 1904 Rinn's office was destroyed, but he took his camera around the city after the fire and was among the first to sell photographic postcards of the ruins.

After 1905, Rinn became known for color postcards, which were produced from his black and white prints by a company in Germany. This arrangement ended with the onset of World War I. After 1923, Rinn went to work for the Brunswick firm of Baltimore, which manufactured photographs.