A photograph by renowned Maryland photographer A. Aubrey Bodine, titled Building the Bay Bridge (1950), offers a dramatic view of the construction of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, a project that linked Maryland's eastern and western shores. The image is part of a series documenting the bridge's construction and is now available for viewing and purchase through Bodine's official website.
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge, when completed in 1952, was the largest continuous entirely-over-water steel structure in the world. Spanning 4.35 miles from Sandy Point to Kent Island, the entire project including approach roads measured 7.727 miles. Construction required approximately 6,500,000 man-hours of labor and 60,000 tons of steel. Work began on November 3, 1949, and the bridge opened on July 30, 1952, at a cost of about $45 million, to be paid for by tolls. The bridge was built in a graceful, sweeping curve to comply with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regulations and to land on favorable terrain.
A. Aubrey Bodine (1906–1970) was regarded as one of the finest pictorialists of the twentieth century. His photographs were exhibited in prestigious shows and museums worldwide, earning top honors. Bodine began his career in 1923 covering stories for the Baltimore Sunday Sun, traveling throughout Maryland to create documentary pictures of occupations and activities. His work combined artistic design and lighting effects that surpassed typical newspaper standards.
Bodine studied the principles of art at the Maryland Institute College of Art and believed photography could be a creative discipline. He experimented with tools, composing pictures in the viewfinder and manipulating negatives with dyes, intensifiers, pencil markings, and even scraping to achieve desired effects. He added clouds photographically and made other elaborate alterations, stating that, like a painter, he worked from the model and selected features that suited his sense of mood, proportion, and design. "He did not take a picture, he made a picture," as described by his biographer.
More than 6,000 photographs spanning Bodine's 47-year career are available for viewing at www.aaubreybodine.com, where the image can be ordered as reprints and note cards. The website also includes the full text of Bodine's biography, A Legend In His Time, written by his editor and closest friend Harold A. Williams. For additional information, visitors can write to info@AAubreyBodine.com or call 1-800-556-7226.
