Black Baltimore Through the Photographs of John Clark Mayden
Authored by Christina J.
While choosing which photographs to place in the exhibit, the co-curator and I immediately agreed on this image. Granny and Her Bible, 1973. She sits reading her Bible by an open window during a hot day in Baltimore. She kicks the sheets to the end of the bed resting her foot on the blanket. Beside her, draped on the chair, is her work outfit, purse, and the Baltimore Sun newspaper. She rests here, and although she tries to “escape” into the Word she cannot avoid the gaze of her grandson’s camera.
Veteran street photographer John Clark Mayden has documented Black Baltimore since the 1970s. With camera in hand, he walks, capturing whatever catches his eye that day—children sitting on a stoop, elders greeting each other on the street, and folks sitting on the bus. His most recent exhibit, City People: Black Baltimore Through the Photographs, gave viewers a glimpse of his photography. As art historian Michael D. Harris stated, “[In Mayden’s photographs] We can see the details of their lives as African Americans in Baltimore; their emotions, changing modes of dress, gestures, and faces that sometimes reveal more than they conceal. We can go places that we might never visit otherwise—places that don’t exist any longer or that an outsider or tourist might not ever know existed.”
CT: What do you want people to see when you are capturing these images of Baltimore?
JM: I want them to see what I’ve documented, as presented. I’m not trying to force their hand as to how they see it, but for how I present it. By that, what I mean is, I manipulate in my documentation, in my printing, in my development; so, hopefully, whatever I presented to you, you’ll see. And you’ll come up with your impression. I’m not trying to tell you how you’re going to see it, though. I learned a long time ago that is impossible to do. So, I don’t sweat that at all.
As Tina Campt reminds us photographs are not simple meant to be seen. Campt stated, “Photographs are haptic objects—meaning they’re not just something we’re supposed to see…our experiences with those images is really about touching them, leafing through them, giving them to other people, sending them to folks, framing them, displaying them—those are not just encounters of vision or sight.” Weaving through 100 of Mayden’s prints, my co-curator and I selected 54 for the exhibit. This process was the most tedious. Which photographs do we want to choose? Which capture Mayden’s Baltimore? What did we want viewers, native Baltimoreans and new migrants, to learn? Baltimore is a city where people come with pre-conceived notions, created through the media. One that appear on televisions through the Baltimore Uprisings following the murder of Freddie Gray, episodes of The Corner or The Wire, or news stories of murder. Combing through Mayden’s prints, you see Baltimore through his lens, his prints. I paused at End of an Era, which showed a demolished Royal Theater, a Black space of entertainment where Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Ethel Waters sold out shows. I smiled at a photograph of a young boy with an older man, so much joy in their faces—an early record of #blackboyjoy in the 70s. I reflected as I chose an image of a woman and child looking out of the window, directly at the photographer. What were they thinking in this moment? One viewer pointed out the possible lead paint that lines the window. In another image, an older woman sits in her doorway, waiting…watching or both. A family sits in another doorway, they wonder as he wander along the streets, camera in hand. I paused again at While Waitin’. The woman sits, head wrapped, on a bench. One hand holds the phone, the other graces the bench that reads, “Baltimore: The Greatest City in America.” How do you escape the images that dictate how people—outsiders—view your city. Well for Mayden it began with documenting his family, his neighborhood, his city. He stated, “As soon as I bought the first camera, I went out on the street and I started doing street photography because I thought, what do I want to photograph? This.”
