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, busy people striding through the snow. Join the Sheridan Libraries and the Billie Holiday Project for a discussion between Mayden and Lawrence Jackson, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in English and history, about Mayden’s photos and what they say about the beauty and heartbreak of everyday life, Black life, in this American city. Learn more about the speakers online.

The event highlights the John Clark Mayden Collection, a gift to Johns Hopkins University through the Africana Archives Initiative, a partnership between the Billie Holiday Project for Liberation Arts and the Sheridan Libraries. Thank you to the Mayden family for this significant and transformative donation. Learn more about the book Baltimore Lives: The Portraits of John Clark Mayden online.