Country: United States 🇺🇸
Born of a mother who was an amateur mathematician and a father who was an amateur photographer in Lexington, Kentucky, USA, Jahi Chikwendiu was destined to pass through both fields of study. In the end, his passion for visual storytelling dominated. A burning desire to tell photographic stories started while earning a mathematics degree from the University of Kentucky. After completing a master’s degree in math education and after teaching high school math for one year, he started as a staff photographer for his hometown newspaper in autumn of 1998. Three months later, Chikwendiu was named the 1998 Photographer of the Year by the Kentucky News Photographers Association. For two years, he documented the rich cultural landscape of Kentucky, USA, before joining the staff of The Washington Post where he has been a staff photographer since the first days of 2001. Chikwendiu has told a wide range of visual stories from more than 40 countries on five continents.
He has covered D.C.’s broken school system, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, genocide in Darfur, south Lebanese victims of Israeli cluster bombs, the aftermath of the 2007 assassination of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto, religious violence in the southern Philippines, police violence in the United States, and 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 president’s father and other stories in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, and South Sudan. In 2023, Chikwendiu covered issues that include climate change and sea level rise, declining life expectancy in the U.S., the Black maternity health crisis in the U.S., and how climate change is increasing the range and season of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in Mozambique.
Throughout his career, Chikwendiu’s work has been recognized and awarded locally, nationally, and internationally, and his images have been exhibited in solo and group showings. Working as a photojournalist can, at times, be jading and isolating, often working unobtrusively solo on issues that often appear not to improve…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.
He has covered D.C.’s broken school system, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, genocide in Darfur, south Lebanese victims of Israeli cluster bombs, the aftermath of the 2007 assassination of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto, religious violence in the southern Philippines, police violence in the United States, and 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 president’s father and other stories in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, and South Sudan. In 2023, Chikwendiu covered issues that include climate change and sea level rise, declining life expectancy in the U.S., the Black maternity health crisis in the U.S., and how climate change is increasing the range and season of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in Mozambique.
Throughout his career, Chikwendiu’s work has been recognized and awarded locally, nationally, and internationally, and his images have been exhibited in solo and group showings. Working as a photojournalist can, at times, be jading and isolating, often working unobtrusively solo on issues that often appear not to improve…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.