A. Aubrey Bodine's 1946 photograph "Harford County Hops Farm" captures a unique community event where seventy-five guests were invited to harvest hops on a Forest Hill farm. The image, available on Bodine's official website, shows long poles bearing hops vines brought in from the fields as guests picked the flowers from the stalks, ultimately gathering seven bales of hops before enjoying a picnic lunch. This photograph is part of a vast collection of over 6,000 images spanning Bodine's 47-year career, now accessible at www.aaubreybodine.com.
The significance of this image extends beyond its historical documentation of Maryland's agricultural past. A. Aubrey Bodine (1906-1970) was regarded as one of the finest pictorialists of the twentieth century. His photographs were exhibited in prestigious shows worldwide and won numerous awards. Bodine's career began in 1923 at the Baltimore Sunday Sun, where he covered stories across Maryland, creating documentary pictures of exceptional quality that often transcended standard newspaper work. He studied art principles at the Maryland Institute College of Art, treating his camera and darkroom equipment as tools akin to a painter's brush or sculptor's chisel.
Bodine's artistic process involved extensive experimentation. He sometimes composed images directly in the viewfinder, while other times he manipulated negatives with dyes, intensifiers, pencil markings, and even scraping to achieve desired effects. He would add clouds photographically and make other elaborate alterations. Bodine believed that like a painter working from a model, he selected features that suited his sense of mood, proportion, and design. His rationale was simple: the picture mattered, not the method of its creation. He did not take a picture; he made a picture.
The "Harford County Hops Farm" photograph exemplifies Bodine's ability to transform a routine agricultural task into an artistic and communal celebration. This image can be ordered by entering the image ID# 48-294 on the website's home page. For those interested in learning more about Bodine, a full biography titled A Legend In His Time, written by his editor and close friend Harold A. Williams, is available on the website. Additionally, visitors can view and order reprints and note cards from the extensive Bodine collection at www.aaubreybodine.com. For further information, inquiries can be directed to the provided contact details.
