A. Aubrey Bodine's Photographic Legacy Captures Historical Farming Techniques

The photograph "Pennsylvania Farm Museum (1958)" by A. Aubrey Bodine captures Elmer Lapp demonstrating the distinctive driving technique of Conestoga wagons, where the driver rode astride the wheel horse rather than inside the wagon, controlling the entire team with a single rein known as a "jerk line." This image preserves a historical farming method that differentiated Conestoga wagons from prairie schooners, showcasing Belgian horses in action and documenting agricultural practices that might otherwise be lost to time.

A. Aubrey Bodine, regarded as one of the finest pictorialists of the twentieth century, began his photographic career in 1923 covering stories for the Baltimore Sunday Sun. He traveled extensively throughout Maryland, creating remarkable documentary pictures that combined artistic design and lighting effects far beyond typical newspaper standards. Bodine believed photography could be a creative discipline, studying art principles at the Maryland Institute College of Art and treating his camera and darkroom equipment as tools akin to a painter's brush or sculptor's chisel.

Bodine's craftsmanship involved constant experimentation, with some pictures composed directly in the camera viewfinder and others manipulated through techniques like dyeing, intensifiers, pencil marking, scraping, and photographic cloud additions. His rationale for these alterations was that, like a painter, he selected features that suited his sense of mood, proportion, and design, emphasizing that "he did not take a picture, he made a picture." His work earned top honors in national and international salon competitions and was exhibited in hundreds of prestigious shows and museums.

More than 6,000 photographs spanning Bodine's 47-year career are available for viewing on the website https://www.aaubreybodine.com, where images can be ordered as reprints and note cards. The full text of the biography "A Legend In His Time," written by Harold A. Williams, Bodine's editor and closest friend, can also be found on the website https://www.aaubreybodine.com, providing comprehensive insight into this remarkable photographer's life and work.