Lexington, KY - Jahi Chikwendiu is an award-winning photojournalist with the Washington Post. His career has taken him deep into the lives of people in his own community and also into some of the world's most dangerous and deadly conflicts. A native of
Lexington, Chikwendiu received his undergraduate degree from the University of Kentucky in mathematics and a master's degree in math education. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and two stepchildren, but much of his extended family remains in Lexington. By his own admission, they and his life here taught him many good things, lessons he has used in his work every step of the way throughout his career. His incredibly powerful images pack a punch, and each tells a complete story - a testament to his talent and skill with a camera and ability to get right to the heart of the lives, struggles and triumphs he chronicles.
What led you into photojournalism?
As far back as I can remember, I have loved listening to people's stories. I would try to be quiet so I could fall into the world of their words and stories - their stories of love, hate, struggle, good times and bad. I think that was an early indication of an ability to dissolve into other people's lives and collect their stories.
Fast forward to college and my getting a math degree from University of Kentucky - during that time, I got bitten by the bug to be a documentary filmmaker. I started riding my bike around Lexington, using a still camera I got from my mother as an excuse to introduce myself to people and gain trust and permission to take their snaps. I knew I wanted more than posed pictures, so I used the skills I learned as a child to fade into the background and let people go about their business, and I would capture a piece of that in photographs.
How do you find the stories you cover?
I find stories and stories find me. Sometimes I am thrown a piece of news or a feature that the paper needs to fill a hole in the next edition. My editors have come to know I excel at making my way into sensitive situations.
I generate photo-driven stories. Lately I have covered the southern Sudan independence referendum; a transitional house for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth who have been shunned by their families; and an ongoing series on Muslims in the United States. I also covered a story on displaced Iraqis trying to eke out a living in Jordan and another on persecuted bloggers in Cairo.
Sometimes, of course, I find my own stories. While working on a story about the poor treatment of Sudanese refugees in Egypt who were fleeing genocide in Sudan, I met a man from London, and we discussed his stories of civilians in southern Lebanon who continued to be killed and maimed by cluster bombs left by Israel's military after the war against southern Lebanon's Hezbollah. I went to southern Lebanon in search of cluster-bomb victims. I told the story from the perspective of a 17-year-old girl who had recently lost her leg when she mistook a cluster bomb for a toy.
Tell me about covering Darfur and Iraq, and the other hotspots you have covered?
Iraq was my first overseas assignment, back in 2003. I was asked to cover the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq from the perspective of the Kurds in the northern part of the country. Other Washington Post photographers were sent to cover other perspectives. I wasn't embedded, so I had to find my own way into the country, and Saddam Hussein's administration wasn't big on journalist visas. After no northern-bordering country would allow me even a transit visa to pass through their country into Iraq, I went to Amman, Jordan, to keep working on a way into Iraq. Two days before the war started, I finally got a visa through Iran.
I bounced through Dubai, quickly passed through Tehran and flew to a border town near Iraq, where it was arranged for me to meet a man. That guy tried to milk me for as much loot as possible. Alone and afraid and desperately lacking sleep, I crossed the border into Iraq on foot, where I met another stranger who agreed to drive me deeper into northern Iraq. The drive took me through some of the most amazing landscape I have ever seen. It was early spring, so the mountain range we passed through had snow-capped mountains overlooking lush green valleys.
The next day, my first full day in the country, we traveled to an area that had been bombed the night before by the United States. The closer we got, the more gunfire we heard. Going farther became not an option. At one point, as we pulled away from an intersection, a car bomber blew himself up at the intersection we had just left. The blast blew out the windows of our truck. Day one in Iraq, and I was definitely thinking, "What have I gotten myself into?"
I spent a month and a half there, capturing the stories of the Iraqi Kurds. I made some dear friends in Kurdistan. I learned to sleep while being violently thrown around an SUV on some of the most unforgiving roads.
Working in Iraq was a luxury, compared to Darfur. In 2004, I spent a month camping along the border of Chad and Sudan. There was a slow, simmering genocidal conflict, and they seemed in constant battle. The Sahara is very unforgiving, and I got very sick there. I had to go to Kenya for surgery, the nearest place I felt comfortable enough for surgery. I went home to the United States to recover, then back to Darfur. Since I was there investigating genocide, the government harassed me a lot. A writer and I were detained for being in a camp of internally displaced people that the government said did not exist. The people were being cleared out overnight, with their whereabouts unknown.
What, in your opinion, makes a great photo?
It's difficult to define. A great one, to me, has to have the aesthetic and the emotion simultaneously. It has to draw me in and make me want to linger.
What was it like to meet President Obama?
Rarely am I shaken by being in the presence of someone famous, but his strong and graceful presence left me a bit awestruck.
You were, for a time, a high school math teacher In Lexington. What does that experience bring to your work?
I taught for one full year. Soon after, I was offered a job as a staff photographer for the Lexington Herald-Leader, my hometown newspaper, [which] I had delivered as a kid, rain, sleet or snow. When I left teaching, it was hard, because I felt like I could have done some good as a teacher. I know some parents and students were disappointed when I announced I wouldn't be finishing my second year, but I also believe we all have to take the chance to fully blossom into our potential and do our best work. I try to honor those students I left and do my best work.
I was at the Herald-Leader for two years. I sent a rough portfolio to the Washington Post and was lucky enough to be hired, so I headed to D.C.
As a man who grew up in Lexington, what did you learn here that you use in the far-flung places you travel in the world?
In many ways, Lexington is a very friendly, down-home place. I learned in Lexington that giving a smile usually gets you one back. I take that friendliness and ease with me wherever I roll, anywhere on the globe.
What do you think we need to know in America about what is going on in other parts of the world?
I don't think the average American knows the extent of poverty around the world and how it affects the human psyche. Life in many other places is raw. When I was in Darfur and suffering from dehydration and was very ill, one of the anti-government rebels I was traveling with said, "Jahi, you've been here two weeks. We live here."
You have said, "A camera is just a tool. It's the soul of the work that matters." How do you get to the soul of a story with your images?
Almost anyone can be taught to use a camera. It's a hammer and nails, a pencil and pad - simply a recording device. What gets built is something from the soul of the photographer.
Deep in me is the desire to take these opportunities to record history. I consider myself a historian, and I want to leave a record. I want to document what can be used now or used by those who come after us. In order to do his best work, a photographer has to connect with people and make them trust you enough to share their real life with you. That takes more work and know-how than just operating a camera.
You are quoted as saying, "The issue of race is so shallow. We need to focus on the bigger picture." How has your photojournalist work brought you a vision of that bigger picture?
I have come to the conclusion that people are people, no matter where I've gone on the planet. That common human nature transcends skin color. But we often wear our skin color like the Dr. Seuss star-bellied Sneetches, holding to the idea that "my hue is better than your hue" and that mentality. Oh, the mess it has caused.
In your documentary on Washington D.C. schools, you expose issues that could be found in many American schools. What are you hoping people will learn from that film?
In my work in D.C. schools, I'm hoping to show how little education is valued in this country and how broken our education system is. Coolidge High School, where I embedded for much of the school year, is an average school in the nation's capital and can symbolize the average school anywhere in the country.
Who were your early mentors?
My earliest, and very influential mentors were David Stephenson and Charles Bertram from the Lexington Herald-Leader photography department, and especially Ron Garrison, the head of the department. They taught me by example how to leave a nice footprint on a scene, meaning leave people with a good feeling about your being there.
Photography has changed a lot in recent years. What do you see for the future of photojournalism?
Yeah, photography has changed. In a relatively short time, we've gone from dealing with film, which was a headache for foreign travel, to shooting digital images we can send from anywhere almost immediately. In that sense, photojournalism has become more immediate in its impact and power.
The industry will probably always be around; what will be different is how images are distributed. There will be fewer and fewer newspaper staff photographers as the industry shrinks. We, as citizens and viewers, are already hooked on how things in the world are playing out, and we want to see - not just hear - what's going on. I guess there will always be forces, governments, nations around the world, doing naughty things that will need to be covered. Sadly, as the power of images becomes more apparent, photojournalists are more often targeted and, at worst, killed.
How does your family handle your sometimes dangerous work and travel?
My wife says she handles it by trying to believe in my instincts enough to know I'll do all I can to come home safe.