John Clark Mayden

John Clark Mayden (born May 16, 1951) is an American photographer, author, and attorney. 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.

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. Mayden then worked as an attorney in the office of the Baltimore City Solicitor for 34 years before his retirement. Mayden was an artist-in-residence at the Light Work program of Syracuse University in 2008.

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. The book of 101 photographs chronicles "the everyday beauty and pain of Black life in Baltimore", he writes. It won the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Bronze Award in 2019 in the category Photography (Adult Nonfiction). 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".

Personal life Mayden married Bronwyn W. Mayden on April 5, 1975, and they have two sons. , 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.