A. Aubrey Bodine

In 1920, age fourteen, A. Aubrey Bodine went to work at Baltimore's The Baltimore Sun as a messenger.[6] At age fifteen, he transferred to the commercial art department.[7] He assisted a staff photographer and Bodine took a number of the pictures. Bodine's career of shooting pictures for the "Baltimore Sunpapers" (as they were colloquially referred to by native Baltimoreans - The Sun, founded 1837 by Arunah Shepherdson Abell, with the additional The Sunday Sun in 1901, followed by The Evening Sun in 1910) started here. Bodine was also taking pictures on his own time with his own Kodak Brownie box camera. The "Supapers"' photographic department was next to the commercial art department. Bodine, when permitted, mixed photographers’ chemicals, developed pictures and made prints. This is where and when his darkroom work began. At that time the offices and printing of "The Sun" were located at what became known as "Sun Square", the southwest corner of Charles Street and Baltimore Street (from 1906-1950), and during his last twenty years at the paper's new headquarters and printing plant (on the site of the old Calvert Street Station of the Northern Central Railroad) at the southeastern corner of North Calvert Street and between East Centre, East Franklin and Bath Streets.

In 1924, Bodine, age 18, was promoted to commercial photographer and his formal photography career at The Sunday Sun began.[8] Bodine illustrated ads that ran in the photogravure section of The Sunday Sun.[9] Bodine also shot pictures that appealed to him personally; a number of these pictures were contributed to "The Sunday Sun" photogravure feature section without credit or payment.[10]

Bodine became Baltimore Sunday Sun feature photographer in 1927, age twenty-one.[11] The Sunday Sun then ran an assortment of local feature stories and pictures about recent events.[12] The influences of the painterly pictorialist aesthetic and the subject-oriented newspaper profession formed the basis of Bodine's photographic legacy.[13]

In 1946, the Sunpapers created The Sunday Sun Magazine. This new format told readers in story form what was going on in and around Maryland, featuring new techniques in writing and design.[14] The new magazine printed with the newer revolutionary rotogravure printing presses which enabled them to make extensive use of photographs in a new editing format resembling independent magazines and their graphics then becoming popular in American media.[15] Bodine was chief photographer and named Photographic Director of the magazine.[16] Bodine photographed postwar mid-Atlantic America, urban and rural. His subject matter included: maritime; ports; heavy industry; assorted occupations; trains; recreation; people; local political personalities and more.[17] Bodine's most popular feature in the magazine was the "Maryland Gallery,” a weekly full-page Bodine picture. The first "Maryland Gallery" picture appeared on December 5, 1948. The premiere article explained Bodine's gallery: "These pictures are more than photographs. They are Bodines—genuine works of art produced over a period of twenty years by A. Aubrey Bodine, photographic director of the Magazine. Many of them have repeatedly taken honors in international salon exhibitions." Few, if any, photo-journalists have had such extensive exposure on the pages of a weekly publication.[18]

Bodine's formal schooling ended at the eighth grade after one year at the old St. Paul's School in Baltimore (now located further north in suburban Baltimore County at Brooklandville, Maryland).[19] He attended the Maryland Institute Evening School at their old historic downtown Market Place site near Centre Market, (now the Maryland Institute College of Art), for two years, 1932–1933 and 1933–1934, studying ‘General Design’. Photography was not part of his curriculum. Bodine believed these two years greatly influenced and benefited his photography.[20]

Bodine believed that salon exhibition work was the biggest factor in developing his artistry.[21] He was one of the first newspapermen to take exhibition work seriously; most of his salon prints came from newspaper assignments. He said his newspaper subject matter gave breadth and vigor to his photography. He entered top shows and exhibited a wide variety of prints, not just his proven winners.[22]

Bodine joined the Baltimore Camera Club (Photographic Club of Baltimore) in 1924. Members met and reviewed each other's photographs. They shared information on techniques of developing and printing. The club sponsored local exhibits, called 'salons', and participated in national and international photographic competitions. Formal instruction in photography was limited; the camera clubs provided a learning opportunity and a forum for theoretical discussion.[23]

From his beginning, Bodine was motivated to seek artistic outlets for his work.[24] He was a charter member of the re-organized Photographic Society of America (PSA), the umbrella organization affiliated with camera clubs, throughout the United States and foreign countries.[25] The initial functions of the PSA centered on: publishing the "PSA Journal"; circulating photography information; nationally publicizing the art of photography; and standardizing photography salon exhibitions.[26] Articles about Pictorialism were published regularly.[27]

By the end of his first decade at The Sun, Bodine was an award-winning P.S.A. pictorialist exhibitor.[28] In 1946 he was named a Fellow of the Photographic Society of America “for outstanding press and marine photography, inspirational teaching and creative pictorial work.” In 1965 Bodine was named Honorary Fellow of the Photographic Society of America, praising him “for his talent, accomplishments and encouraging influence in photography as an art, and for his devoted service to the P.S.A. over a long period of years.” The honorary fellowship is the highest honor the PSA can bestow and is awarded only for unique or outstanding achievement in photography; it had been awarded to only 20 others (by 1965), including Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston.[29]

In the mid-fifties Bodine focused on entering foreign salon exhibitions. He exhibited in Barcelona, Bucharest, Delhi, Ghent, Karachi, Singapore, Sydney and Queensland, Australia, Vienna and Zagreb, Yugoslavia. He won major awards in Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Canada, Cuba, England, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Luxemburg, Malaya, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Republic of China, the Republic of South Africa, Romania, the Soviet Union, Spain, Sweden, and Yugoslavia. In the 1960s Bodine’s salon work wound down. His health was failing and he needed to finish his fourth book, The Face of Virginia.[30]

In 1965 Bodine had a one-man show in Moscow that was the first exchange of one-man photography exhibits between the United States and the U.S.S.R. Bodine’s Soviet counterpart was Vladimir Shakhovskoi, the “dean” of Russian photographers.[31]

The National Press Photographers Association (N.P.P.A.) began with a 1945 conference of eighteen photographers from the major United States newspapers. A. Aubrey Bodine represented the Baltimore "Sunpapers". He worked closely with the NPPA’s first president, Joseph Costa, a New York Daily News photographer, in the forming of a national organization to promote respect and recognition for the profession of photojournalism.[32] Costa said of Bodine: “I considered him certainly the finest print maker I have ever known and the greatest photographic pictorialist of his time-if not all-time greatest.”[33]

In 1948, the NPPA inaugurated its annual awards for photographic achievements. Bodine’s images competed with pictures of hard "spot" news. His photographs were published in a newspaper, but they were from a different genre that set him apart from the majority of NPPA members.[34] He was a feature photographer working with the advantage of a public that was thrilled when Bodine arrived to take a picture. He had none of the daily pressures to produce timely "spot" news photos. His editors gave him flexibility with photo assignments.[35]

In 1953 Bodine was named a "Fellow of the National Press Photographers’ Association" in "recognition of his outstanding achievement as photographer, pictorialist and exhibitor in photographic salons throughout the world and for the attention and recognition which such success has brought to the profession of photojournalism."[36] Bodine was first photographer to have a Fellowship in both the N.P.P.A. and the Photographic Society of America (P.S.A.).[37]

In 1957, Bodine was named "Newspaper-Magazine Photographer of the Year", a distinction created by the judges specifically for A. Aubrey Bodine. The NPPA April, 1957 newsletter elaborated on the new award: "Bodine had the highest point score in the whole competition. …however the judges felt a distinction had to be made between a photographer covering assignments for Sunday feature use like Bodine, and one covering general assignments—daily spot-news events."[38]

During his exhibition years Bodine judged in many major Eastern shows. He was interested in, and frequently commented on all aspects of judging photography contests.[39]

Bodine improved his pictures by dubbing in clouds.[48] He kept files of cloud negatives to be added to his prints of landscapes and water scenes. He developed this technique out of an established nineteenth century pictorialist tradition.[49] To compensate for the limitations of their materials, pictorialists exposed negatives containing only clouds and then double printing the final image, first for the landscape and then for the cloud detail. Bodine made no secret of his use of cloud negatives. He wrote: "For years I have been successfully printing in clouds and think nothing of printing clouds on regular routine assignments." With such a technique he could also change the mood or even the time of day in an image. A water scene printed with heavy clouds would appear to be from a negative taken late in the day. The same negative could be printed with lighter clouds and give the appearance of morning or early afternoon.[50] Clouds were not the only elements Bodine added to his photographs. Silhouettes of birds, particularly seagulls, were added to water scenes. To create a well-defined moon or sun, Bodine placed an appropriate size coin on the paper during the darkroom exposure. He added specks of white to simulate snow or rain in his photographs, frequently on the overall image, or, in many instances, simply on certain areas. The snow piled on the ironwork in "Fells Point, Baltimore" was totally added in the darkroom. He used paintbrush and dye to paint details onto the negative for more moonlight reflecting on the water or when he felt additional white highlights would be an improvement. To create a window or frame, he would add fish nets to the final image.[51]