Jahi Chikwendiu

Jahi Chikwendiu is an American photojournalist whose work has covered armed conflicts, public health, education, race and other social issues in the United States and abroad. He was a staff photographer at The Washington Post from 2001 to 2025.

In 2026, Chikwendiu won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for a photo essay documenting a young couple who welcomed their first child while the father was dying from cancer. The project, titled Tanner's Song, also received a 2026 World Press Photo award in the North and Central America Stories category. He had previously won first prize in the Nature Singles category of the 2005 World Press Photo Contest.

Early life and education Chikwendiu is a native of Lexington, Kentucky. He studied mathematics at the University of Kentucky, earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a master's degree in mathematics education. His interest in photography developed while he was a university student, when he began using a still camera to approach people and document their lives. Three months after beginning his newspaper career, he was named the 1998 Photographer of the Year by the Kentucky News Photographers Association.

Other subjects photographed by Chikwendiu included the aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, religious violence in the southern Philippines, police brutality in the United States, climate change and sea-level rise, maternal health among Black Americans, declining life expectancy in the United States and the effects of climate change on malaria transmission in Mozambique.

The series, later titled Tanner's Song, was selected as a North and Central America Stories winner in the 2026 World Press Photo Contest. The jury praised its sensitive treatment of the family and its use of traditional black-and-white documentary photography. 2025: Second place, Photojournalist of the Year–National, National Press Photographers Association Best of Photojournalism competition 2026: North and Central America Stories winner, World Press Photo Contest, for Tanner's Song 2026: Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, for his photographs of Tanner and Shay Martin