Elaine Mayes was born in Berkeley, California.  She graduated from Stanford University, where she majored in painting and art history.  After Stanford, Mayes attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where her instructors included John Collier, Jr., Richard Diebenkorn, and Minor White.  Mayes was one of a handful of students to study photography in the then-new photography program.  She was the first woman to teach studio-art photography at the University of Minnesota in 1968.  Mayes moved to New York in 1982 and began a teaching career at Bard College, Pratt Institute, the International Center of Photography, and New York University, where she was Chair of the photography department at Tisch School of the Arts until her retirement in 2000.

Mayes lives and works in upstate New York.

Elaine Mayes's photographs have been exhibited internationally in museums and galleries.  Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), among many other public institutions worldwide.