[2][3] 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.

[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.

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.

[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] 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.

As of 2020[update], 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.