The Billie Holiday Project for Liberation Arts and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum hosted a virtual program with award-winning photographer John Clark Mayden, who has been documenting life in Baltimore ’s African American neighborhoods since the 1970s. The event was 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.

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. The event highlighted the John Clark Mayden Collection, a gift to Johns Hopkins through the Africana Archives Initiative, a partnership between the BHPLA and the Sheridan Libraries. 

Mayden’s recent photo book, Baltimore Lives, can be purchased from the Johns Hopkins Press.