Historic A. Aubrey Bodine Photograph of Ellicott City Railroad Platform Available for Public Acquisition

The photograph "Ellicott City and the B & O Railroad (1952)" by renowned twentieth-century pictorialist A. Aubrey Bodine captures a historical view of the ancient stone buildings from Ellicott City's once busy B & O Railroad platform. This image, available through the photographer's official archive, documents a significant aspect of Maryland's transportation history during the mid-twentieth century.

A. Aubrey Bodine (1906-1970) was regarded in photographic circles worldwide as one of the finest pictorialists of his century. His photographs were exhibited in hundreds of prestigious shows and scores of museums, winning awards against top competition. Bodine's photographic career began in 1923 when he started covering stories for the Baltimore Sunday Sun, traveling throughout Maryland to create remarkable documentary pictures of various occupations and activities that exceeded usual newspaper standards through their artistic design and lighting effects.

Bodine approached photography as a creative discipline, studying art principles at the Maryland Institute College of Art and treating his camera and darkroom equipment as tools similar to a painter's brush or sculptor's chisel. His craftsmanship involved constant experimentation, with some pictures composed directly in the camera viewfinder while others involved working on negatives with dyes, intensifiers, pencil markings, and even scraping to achieve desired effects. He photographically added clouds and performed other elaborate manipulations, believing that like painters working from models, photographers should select features that suit their sense of mood, proportion, and design.

The historical significance of this particular photograph extends beyond its artistic merit, serving as documentation of Maryland's industrial and transportation heritage. The B & O Railroad platform in Ellicott City represents an important chapter in American railroad history, and Bodine's image preserves this historical landscape for future generations. Those interested in viewing or acquiring this photograph can visit https://www.aaubreybodine.com where more than 6,000 photographs spanning Bodine's 47-year career are available for viewing and ordering as reprints and note cards.

For those seeking deeper understanding of Bodine's life and work, the full biography "A Legend In His Time," written shortly after his death by Harold A. Williams (Bodine's editor and closest friend), is available on the official website at https://www.aaubreybodine.com. The continued availability of Bodine's work through https://www.aaubreybodine.com ensures that his artistic legacy and documentary record of mid-twentieth century Maryland remain accessible to historians, artists, and the general public.