John Clark Mayden

Last updated

John Clark Mayden
John Mayden Feb 2020 by Will Kirk.JPG
Mayden speaking at Johns Hopkins University, 2020
Born (1951-05-16) May 16, 1951 (age 72)
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Occupationphotographer, writer, attorney
EducationB.A., Ohio Wesleyan University
J.D., University of Baltimore School of Law
Notable worksBaltimore Lives: The Portraits of John Clark Mayden
SpouseBronwyn W. Mayden (1975–present)

John Clark Mayden (born May 16, 1951) is an American photographer, author, and attorney. [1] In 2019, he authored Baltimore Lives: The Portraits of John Clark Mayden, his collected photographic works of African-Americans in Baltimore street scenes between 1970 and 2012. [2] [3]

Contents

Early years

Mayden was born in 1951 and grew up in Baltimore's Druid Hill Park neighborhood, where he enjoyed swimming as a youth at the local YMCA, eventually becoming a lifeguard there. [1] He graduated from Baltimore's old Northwestern High School, where he was the first black president of the student government at a time when the school was predominantly white. Mayden was also captain of Northwestern's football team in his senior year, as well as competing on the track team. [1] [4]

Mayden was impressed as a youngster by the Life magazine photography of Gordon Parks. [4] While still a teenager, Mayden interned at WMAR-TV, where he became interested in photography as an assistant accompanying the Baltimore television station's staff photographer covering various news assignments. He then progressed to learning photographic processing in the newsroom's darkroom. [3]

Mayden graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and a minor in fine arts. [4] While at Ohio Wesleyan, he was admitted to the university's chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the political science honor society. In 1978, Mayden obtained a Juris Doctor degree at the University of Baltimore School of Law. [5] Mayden then worked as an attorney in the office of the Baltimore City Solicitor for 34 years before his retirement. [4] [6] He also led the successful effort to reopen the closed YMCA where he swam and played basketball as a teenager. [1] In the early 1980s, Mayden was president of that Y's board of directors.

Photography

As an African-American, Mayden's photographs of black life have been exhibited nationwide and portray people he has encountered in various street scenes of Baltimore and some of its gritty neighborhoods. His photographs were extolled by James Baldwin for capturing the "majesty of black life" in portraying people who are "weary but not cast down". [3] Mayden's works have been exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the University of Pennsylvania's Sharp Gallery, as well as the Baltimore Museum of Art, Walters Art Museum, and most recently Johns Hopkins University's George Peabody Library. [4] [6] [7] Mayden was an artist-in-residence at the Light Work program of Syracuse University in 2008. [5] [6] For the 2019 exhibition of his works at the George Peabody Library, City People: Black Baltimore in the Photographs of John Clark Mayden, the curators said, "Mayden lays bare the beauty and heartbreak of everyday life, Black life, in an American city." [8] [9] [10]

Baltimore Lives: The Portraits of John Clark Mayden cover photograph (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019) Baltimore-Lives book cover.jpg
Baltimore Lives: The Portraits of John Clark Mayden cover photograph (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019)

In 2019, Mayden authored Baltimore Lives: The Portraits of John Clark Mayden, his collected photographic works of African-Americans in Baltimore street scenes between 1970 and 2012. [2] [3] [11] The book of 101 photographs chronicles "the everyday beauty and pain of Black life in Baltimore", he writes. [12] It won the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Bronze Award in 2019 in the category Photography (Adult Nonfiction). [13] The judges making the award praised both the technical excellence of Mayden's photography, citing its "gorgeous velvety tones and textures" and "composition, lighting, and darkroom technique", and the subject matter of people "burdened by problems, but whose everyday lives resonate with intensity". [3] [12]

Mayden told a reporter that he recalls taking the photo used on the book's cover (pictured) in 1977. The unknown woman was waiting at a neighborhood bus stop. After she made eye contact, he snapped her picture, anticipating it would make a beguiling portrait. [3]

Mayden's photographs appear in the HBO film adaptation of Between the World and Me , which is based on Ta-Nehisi Coates' account of his struggles as a black youth in Baltimore. [3] The Baltimore Sun called the photographs "powerful images". [3]

Personal life

Mayden married Bronwyn W. Mayden on April 5, 1975, and they have two sons. As of 2020, the couple lives in the west Baltimore neighborhood of Hunting Ridge, a city-designated Historic District, where he maintains a photography studio and darkroom having more than 30,000 negatives. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ansel Adams</span> American photographer and environmentalist (1902–1984)

Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed a system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a technical understanding of how the tonal range of an image is the result of choices made in exposure, negative development, and printing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerry Uelsmann</span> American photographer (1934–2022)

Jerry Norman Uelsmann was an American photographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doris Ulmann</span> American photographer (1882–1934)

Doris Ulmann was an American photographer, best known for her portraits of the people of Appalachia, particularly craftsmen and musicians, made between 1928 and 1934.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornell Capa</span> Hungarian American photographer

Cornell Capa was a Hungarian American photographer, member of Magnum Photos, photo curator, and the younger brother of photo-journalist and war photographer Robert Capa. Graduating from Imre Madách Gymnasium in Budapest, he initially intended to study medicine, but instead joined his brother in Paris to pursue photography. Cornell was an ambitious photo enthusiast who founded the International Center of Photography in New York in 1974 with help from Micha Bar-Am after a stint of working for both Life magazine and Magnum Photos.

The term vernacular photography is used in several related senses. Each is in one way or another meant to contrast with received notions of fine-art photography. Vernacular photography is also distinct from both found photography and amateur photography. The term originated among academics and curators, but has moved into wider usage.

Volkmar Kurt Wentzel was a German American photographer and cinematographer. He worked for nearly 50 years for the National Geographic Society as a darkroom technician and photographer, and his professional and personal work was highly acclaimed. He was one of the first people to take photographs of then-little known country of Nepal, and was noted for documenting the final years of many of the traditional tribal kingdoms of Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Sheffer</span>

Walter S. Sheffer was an American photographer and teacher, born in Youngsville, Pennsylvania. He moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1945 to work at the studio of John Platz, Milwaukee's main society photographer. When Platz retired, Sheffer inherited his clientele and was able to establish his own "look" and very successful portrait studio by 1953. He also taught advanced portraiture at the Layton School of Art from 1952 to 1970.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">R.C. Hickman</span> American photographer

R.C. Hickman was an American photographer, photojournalist and circulation manager, known for his photographs of the Civil Rights Movement. Hickman's work includes documenting the Mansfield school desegregation incident, as well as the visitation of people such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald in Dallas, Texas. For many decades he worked as a photographer for the Dallas Star Post as well as freelancing for Jet, Ebony and an array of other African-American magazine publications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benjamen Chinn</span> American photographer

Benjamen Chinn was an American photographer known especially for his black and white images of Chinatown, San Francisco and of Paris, France in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Anthony Barboza is a photographer, historian, artist and writer. With roots originating from Cape Verde, and work that began in commercial art more than forty years ago, Barboza's artistic talents and successful career helped him to cross over and pursue his passions in the fine arts where he continues to contribute to the American art scene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florida Museum of Photographic Arts</span> Photography Museum in E Avenue Ybor, Tampa FL

The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMoPA) is a museum dedicated to exhibiting important photographic art as central to contemporary life and culture. FMoPA also enriches the community by operating outreach programs to educate children and adults. FMoPA is one of fewer than ten museums in the United States dedicated exclusively to photography and one of two such museums in Florida. In addition, the museum is home to high-impact community programs such as the Children's Literacy Through Photography program for at-risk children and adult photography classes, workshops, and children's summer camps. FMOPA’s upcoming move to historic Ybor City gives the promise of growth and a new and dynamic environment to showcase its extensive collection and host exhibitions from acclaimed photographers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William H. Rau</span>

William Herman Rau was an American photographer who was active primarily in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best remembered for his stereo cards of sites around the world, and for his panoramic photographs of sites along the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Lida Moser was an American-born photographer and author, with a career that spanned more than six decades, before retiring in her 90s. She was known for her photojournalism and street photography as a member of both the Photo League and the New York School. Her portfolio includes black and white commercial, portrait, landscape, experimental, abstract, and documentary photography, with her work continuing to have an impact.

Hannah Starkey is a British photographer who specializes in staged settings of women in city environments, based in London. In 2019 she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James H. Evans</span>

James H. Evans is an American photographer. Currently based in Marathon, Texas, Evans' work focuses on documenting the West Texas area through subject, landscape, and portrait photography. Though Evans works all around the Big Bend area of Texas, he is best known for his work within Big Bend National Park.

Harvey Wang is an American photographer based in New York City. He has published several books of photography. He is known for his portraits and short films.

Janine Wiedel is a documentary photographer and visual anthropologist. She was born in New York City, has been based in the UK since 1970, and lives in London. Since the late 1960s she has been working on projects which have become books and exhibitions. In the early 1970s she spent five years working on a project about Irish Travellers; in the late 1970s two years documenting the industrial heartland of Britain. Wiedel's work is socially minded, exploring themes such as resistance, protest, multiculturalism and counterculture movements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Lebe</span> American photographer (born 1948)

David Lebe is an American photographer. He is best known for his experimental images using techniques such as pinhole cameras, hand-painted photographs, photograms, and light drawings. Many of his photographs explore issues of gay identity, homoeroticism, and living with AIDS, linking his work to that of contemporaries such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar, and David Wojnarowicz. Though his style and approach set him apart from these contemporaries, "Lebe is now incontrovertibly part of the history of twentieth-century queer artists."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Bishop (photojournalist)</span> American photojournalist

Jennifer Bishop is an American photojournalist based in Baltimore who is notable for her street photography. She was one of the founders of the alternative weekly Baltimore City Paper when it began publishing in 1977, and she contributed photographs consistently to the publication from its inception to 1994. She was given her own space, choosing pictures which were "unfettered by second-guessing editors", in which she often recorded "the quirky moments, sudden epiphanies, visual paradoxes and poetic ironies that define the strangeness of everyday life", often of "gritty inner-city neighborhoods."

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Thomas, Christina (Fall 2019). "Interview with John Clark Mayden". The Hopkins Review . Johns Hopkins University Press. 12 (4). Retrieved December 24, 2020.
  2. 1 2 Baltimore Lives: The Portraits of John Clark Mayden. WorldCat. October 8, 2019. ISBN   9781421432847. OCLC   1083152687.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Turner, Tatyana (December 24, 2020). "For 50 years, a Baltimore photographer trained his lens on the city. Now he's in the spotlight". Baltimore Sun . Retrieved December 24, 2020.(subscription required)
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "John Clark Mayden Photograph Collection". Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences . Retrieved December 24, 2020.
  5. 1 2 "John Clark Mayden". Light Work. April 2008. Retrieved December 24, 2020.
  6. 1 2 3 "John Clark Mayden". Brilliant Baltimore. Retrieved December 24, 2020.
  7. ↑ "City People: Black Baltimore in the Photographs of John Clark Mayden". Issuu. Retrieved January 16, 2021.
  8. ↑ "City People". Sheridan Libraries. Retrieved January 16, 2021.
  9. ↑ "City People: Black Baltimore in the Photographs of John Clark Mayden". Baltimore magazine . Retrieved December 24, 2020.
  10. ↑ "An Interview With John Clark Mayden". YouTube video. 2019.
  11. ↑ "Baltimore Lives | Johns Hopkins University Press Books". jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu. Retrieved January 16, 2021.
  12. 1 2 Jagareski, Rachel (September–October 2019). "Baltimore Lives: The Portraits of John Clark Hayden". Foreword magazine. Retrieved December 25, 2020.
  13. ↑ "Photography (Adult Nonfiction)". Foreword magazine. Retrieved December 24, 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.