Jahi Chikwendiu

Jahi Chikwendiu wanted to be practical, but in the end, his passion for photojournalism won out. After earning his undergraduate degree in mathematics and a master’s degree in math education from the University of Kentucky, Chikwendiu began his career as a high school math instructor, teaching for a year and enjoying the everyday challenges of being an educator. During that first year of teaching, Chikwendiu’s first Spring Break included a visit to The Washington Post where multiple-Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and editor Michel du Cille would be the first professional editor to ever see Chikwendiu’s portfolio. Inspired by du Cille’s suggestion, Chikwendiu spent his first summer break from teaching as an independent photographer for his hometown newspaper, the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader. At the end of that summer, his career took a turn when Herald-Leader director of photography Ron Garrison offered him a fulltime staff photojournalism position. Three months later, the Kentucky News Photographer Association (KNPA) named Jahi the 1998 Photographer of the Year. After two years of covering the rich cultural landscape of Kentucky, he would join the staff of The Washington Post, where he’s been a staff photographer since January of 2001.

Since joining the Washington Post, Chikwendiu’s main base of coverage has been the DC area, but he has covered a wide range of stories that include DC’s broken school system, the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and the country’s adjustments following the 2012 US military pullout, AIDS and poverty in Kenya, genocide in Darfur, cluster bomb victims in South Lebanon, the 2011 formation of the world’s newest country, South Sudan. Chikwendiu spent the first three months of 2009 in Africa covering the Barack Obama inauguration from the Kenyan home village of the US president’s father and other stories in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, and South Sudan. In 2014, Chikwendiu spent well over a month in Missouri covering issues surrounding the fatal shooting of unarmed, Black teenager Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, a police officer for the city of Ferguson, Missouri. In the past couple of years, Chikwendiu has covered issues of immigration in the US, the economic recovery of Ferguson, Missouri, four years after the death of Michael Brown, unemployment in Omaha, Nebraska, voting among voter suppression in rural Georgia, the effects of governmental collapse in Venezuela on the neighboring island-nation of Trinidad, and the mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio.

The photojournalist’s work has been recognized by various local, national, and international organizations – KY Newspaper Photographers Association, Atlanta Photojournalism Seminars, World Press Photo, Days Japan International Photojournalism Awards, National Association of Black Journalists, White House News Photo Association, Nat’l Press Photographers Assoc, Virginia News Photographer Association, Overseas Press Club, Harry Chapman Media Awards, Pictures of the Year International, Northern Short Course, Southern Short Course, the Kentucky Governor Arts Awards, and the Scripps Howard Awards for Journalism…

– but his heart always comes back to the question of how to best evolve as a storyteller and how to best raise the next generation of visionaries.