Hans Marx: Award-winning Sun photographer

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Hans Marx, a self-taught photographer, worked for The Baltimore Sun from 1937 to 1955. His award-winning career was capped in 1953 when he was recognized as the Newspaper Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association.

“Essentially, I am a photojournalist,” said Marx in a Newsweek magazine article in 1954. “My principal aim is to record those vignettes of life as I stumble upon them or they upon me.”

Considered a daredevil, Marx would often do things that others wouldn’t — to get the right shot, such as climb to the top of the uncompleted Bay Bridge or hang over the side a ship, supported only by his toes.

Marx was very good at capturing light and shadow. Many of his photos have a calm beauty to them. He also had gift of capturing emotion as illustrated in his 1953 photo of a country doctor.

A fan of ships and steam trains, he used the steam, smoke, fog or mist and time of day to great effect. Many of his photos were snapped with Speed Graphic, Rolaflex and Leica cameras.

After leaving The Sun, Marx became a self-employed photographer. He died in 1999 at the age of 83. Marx’s black-and-white sepia-toned photographs told stories when they were first taken and still tell those stories today.

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Award-winning Sun photographer Hans Marx, 83