Award winning photographer John Clark Mayden has been documenting life in Baltimore ’s African American neighborhoods since the 1970s. His photographs capture the ordinary joys and sorrows, quiet moments, and daily realities of life: kids on their bikes and roller skates, old timers catching a breeze on their front stoops and busy people striding through the snow. Join the Reginald F. Lewis Museum for a discussion between Mr. Mayden and Bloomberg Distinguished Lawrence Jackson about Mr. Mayden’s photos and what they say about the beauty and heartbreak of everyday life, Black life, in this American city.

The event highlights the John Clark Mayden Collection, a gift to Johns Hopkins through the Africana Archives Initiative, a partnership between the Billie Holiday Project for Liberation Arts and the Sheridan Libraries. 

Lives can be purchased from the Johns Hopkins Press at jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/baltimore-lives. 

Cost: Free

Click Here to Register for this Virtual Event.

John Clark Mayden grew up and attended school in West  Baltimore and began his career as a photographer at WMAR-TV. He earned his B.A. in Politics and Fine Arts from Ohio Wesleyan University and his Juris Doctorate from the University of Baltimore School of Law.  In 2008, he was a Syracuse Artist-in-Residence at Light Work. His work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum of Harlem, the Walters Art Museum, the Eubie Blake Cultural Center, and the Baltimore Museum of Arts, among other venues. It was also featured in the film Through a Lens Darkly. His book  Lives was named the 2019 Bronze Winner of the Foreword INDIES Reviews awards for photography.

Lawrence Jackson is the of the award-winning books Chester B. Himes: A Biography (W.W. Norton 2017) and The Indignant Generation: A Narrative of African American Writers and Critics (Princeton 2010).  In 2002, he published Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius, 1913-1952 (Wiley), and he has written a memoir on race and family history called My Father’s Name: A Black Virginia Family after the Civil War ( 2012).  Jackson earned a PhD in English and American literature at Stanford University, and he is a 2019 Guggenheim fellowship awardee. A Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and at Johns Hopkins University, he is the founder and director of the Billie Holiday Project for Liberation Arts to create opportunities for enhanced intellectual and artistic relations between Hopkins and Baltimore City, his hometown. He is completing a book about his return called Job’s Labyrinth, or, Shelter (Grey 2021).