Bodine, A. Aubrey. The Face of Maryland by A. Aubrey Bodine.

Bodine/Viking, 1961.  Text and photographs by A. Aubrey Bodine.  First edition, fine, illustrated boards, with good plus protected dust jacket that has small tape repairs at spine tips. 144 pages.  Maps on endpapers. Includes black-and-white photographs from all over Maryland, notably Baltimore, Eastern Shore, Western Shore, and Southern Maryland, and a section on Maryland and the Civil War.  One photo depicts Bodine photographing Baltimore artist Edward Rosenfeld.  Detailed index at end of book. Bodine (1906–1970) was a legendary Baltimore photographer who worked for the Baltimore Sun’s Sunday Sun Magazine for decades and frequently exhibited his work internationally and won hundreds of prizes.  His other books included My Maryland and Chesapeake Bay and Tidewater. Summary:

The Face of Maryland by A. Aubrey Bodine is a classic photographic survey and visual portrait of the U.S. state of Maryland, originally published in 1961 by Bodine & Associates with distribution by Viking Press. The book spans approximately 144 pages and is richly illustrated with duo-tone black-and-white photographs taken by Bodine, one of Maryland’s most celebrated photographers.

📸 Content and Structure

• Comprehensive Photographs: The book presents a wide range of images documenting Maryland’s landscapes, towns, people, and cultural landmarks — from the Alleghenies and Western Maryland, across Chesapeake Bay and the Eastern Shore, to Baltimore, Annapolis, and Ocean City. Bodine’s lens captures the state’s natural beauty, historic sites, and everyday life in striking photographic detail.

• Explanatory Captions: Each photograph is accompanied by captions that provide context about the location, subject, and significance of the scene, allowing readers to appreciate both the visual and narrative elements of Maryland’s identity.

📍 Themes and Emphasis

• Celebration of Place: The book serves as a celebration of Maryland’s character — its rural vistas, urban centers, waterways, and cultural heritage. Bodine’s images highlight the diversity of environments and communities throughout the state.

• Artistic and Documentary Value: Beyond simple documentation, Bodine’s photography reflects his artistic skill and deep familiarity with his home state — the result of decades spent photographing Maryland for publications such as The Baltimore Sun Magazine.

📘 Significance

The Face of Maryland stands as an evocative visual tribute to the Free State, offering both residents and wider audiences a richly textured look at Maryland’s people, places, and spirit during the mid-20th century. Its photographs have made the book a cherished piece of regional photography and local history.

A. Aubrey Bodine (1906–1970) was an acclaimed American photojournalist, pictorialist, and chronicler of mid-20th-century life in Maryland, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Mid-Atlantic region. Born in Baltimore, Bodine joined The Baltimore Sun in 1920 as a commercial messenger before becoming a staff photographer for the newspaper’s Sunday Sun Magazine in 1927—a position he held for nearly fifty years. A master practitioner of Pictorialism long after the style lost mainstream dominance, Bodine employed romantic atmospheric effects, heavy darkroom manipulation, hand-toned monochrome prints, and careful composition to elevate everyday photojournalism into fine art. Over his five-decade career, he published widely celebrated books including My Maryland (1952), Chesapeake Bay and Tidewater (1954), and The Face of Maryland (1967), documenting watermen, steel mills, rural landscapes, and historical architecture across the region. Honored as a Fellow of the Photographic Society of America and awarded the status of Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, Bodine accumulated hundreds of national and international salon awards, securing his legacy as one of the quintessential visual regionalists in American photographic history.