Sun Auctions Archived Photos on eBay

Brad Rodgers was browsing for Jones Falls memorabilia on eBay when he found some old Baltimore Sun photos. Then more. Then dozens.

The North Baltimore resident stumbled upon a collection of photographs that have been put up for by The Sun and other papers owned by the Chicago-based Tribune Company.

The auctions include original and wire photos of people and subjects, such as Jack Benny, Joseph Stalin, Louis Armstrong, The Duchess of Windsor, Burma in World War II, a 1965 civil rights protest and scenes of Baltimore-area landmarks and streetscapes. The photos are available to buy or bid on for $10 to $25 each.

On Saturday, is by the late A. Aubrey Bodine. The auctioneer has a catalog of the photos for sale.

Renee Mutchnik, the Sun's vice president of marketing and communications, deferred questions to a press release about the Bodine auction. In that release, the paper said that the 7,000 Bodine photos had been scanned, and The Sun is in the process of digitizing one million photos from its collection.

“Our photo archive documents life in Maryland over the years and captures some of the most poignant moments in our past, both locally and nationally,” Timothy J. Thomas, senior vice president of business development for the Baltimore Sun Media Group, said in the release earlier this week. “Because we now have the images captured digitally, we can open up our photo archives to the general public for photo reprints and make the originals available to people who want to own a part of history.”

However, the original photos also include contextual notations about the subject, such as when the photo was taken. Rodgers quickly bought about a dozen photos of the Jones Falls watershed, before the collection was broken up by others buying the pictures.

"You put all these things together and you begin to have this real treasure of information and if it gets sold ... that basis of knowledge is disaggregated and lost," Rodgers said.

And although he's happy to have found the photos, he wishes he didn't have to buy them.

"In a just and noble world, they would all be donated to the Maryland Historical Society or in some way they could all be retained for their historical value. But instead, they're all going to go out into the open world where nobody knows what's going to happen to them," he said.

A former member of the Jones Falls Watershed Association, Rodgers said he's not yet sure what he'll do with the watershed photos he bought.

"Someday I'll either find a good home for them or put them to some meaningful use," he said. "Either that or my wife will throw it all out."