A powerful photograph can be even more emotional when we hear the story of how it was made.
If it was taken in Darfur, where each of thousands of refugees has a story of tragedy to tell, the emotion grows exponentially.
Washington Post photographer Jahi Chikwendiu has twice been to Darfur to recount a struggle that he strongly believes deserves more attention.
He has also reported on crisis and struggle in Iraq, Kenya, Northern Uganda and South Lebanon as well as in the U.S.
His work earned him recognition recently as Still Photographer of the Year from the White House News Photographers Association, as well as awards from the National Press Photographers Association, Pictures of the Year International, World Press Photo and many more organizations.
Sara Quinn: How did you end up going to Darfur?
Jahi Chikwendiu: I may have shown some interest to our editors, Michel duCille and people like that.
The story started blowing up in terms of media coverage. We had an excellent correspondent based in Nairobi, Emily Wax, who started working on the story a lot. So I ended up plugging in with Emily and started finding out more about the story, what she was doing on the story, where it was headed. So that, when they were ready to send a photographer, I was already plugged into the story, so I was, like, the most logical choice to send.
I don’t know if I conveyed this to the editors, but the issue was so close to me. I likened it to what happened to the Native Americans in the United States, I wanted to look into this modern genocide –- this is genocide that’s happening in our day.
I went twice. The first time, was a matter of following the route of the writer. She went to the border of Chad and Sudan. We decided to take the roundabout route, going to the border where a lot of refugees were spilling over from Sudan to Chad, working refugee camps along the border there. And then, hooking up with rebel factions -– SLA, the Sudanese Liberation Army. And then going across the border into Sudan, into Darfur with them and telling the story through their perspectives.
How many people do you estimate were in the first camp you saw?
Chikwendiu: The camp was so expansive that I never saw the whole camp. If I stood in the middle of it I could look in every direction and, as far as the eye could see, there were tents. I never made my own estimation of how many people were there … These were like cities. You could see them start to function like cities or towns, where there would be a doctor’s office and there would be little stores popping up. There would be little restaurants popping up inside these camps. I guess they had to function like that. The camps were huge.
Chikwendiu: This is my first day in the camp. The camp, like I said, was huge … I’m on the edge of the camp — of course, I’m always looking for a different perspective to look at things. So I’m standing on this water truck that had pulled up to the edge of the camp. And I’m shooting the camp. I started noticing people’s attention go to an area behind the camp … I didn’t even know what it was.
… So maybe within a few minutes I figured I’d better get off of this truck. I take off running, and within seconds, wham! I just get hit by this wall of wind, and the sand is moving so hard that it’s kind of slicing against you.
I just remember looking for shelter. I saw these guys walking and I saw them jump in a tent. So I just jumped in the tent with them. They seemed OK with my being there, because we started giving each other the thumbs up.
I was just sitting there waiting for … hoping, praying that I wouldn’t be impaled by something flying. So then, I got myself together. I had a few handkerchiefs that I wrapped around my camera and my face. I fashioned a camera hood out of my handkerchiefs. I started walking around, looking through my camera. Not even taking pictures. Because it was the only way that I could see. The sand was just slicing at my eyes. So, for a while after that, my vision was blurry where the sand had just scarred my eye lenses.
Then, I thought, OK, I need to function. I need to be documenting what’s going on. I started to walk around, looking for situations under the hood. Just taking snaps.
What did you see in the aftermath of the storm?
Chikwendiu: It was completely calm! If everything wasn’t the orange tint of the sand, you wouldn’t have known that a sandstorm just blew through.
I was just looking around at people and how, you know, sand was just caked on their faces and in their clothes.
Then, I saw this lady who — clearly from her face and her hands, she’s an older lady — who had these glasses on where sand was just caked in the glasses. All except for this one little spot where she took her finger and kind of made a clearing for her to see.
So, that’s when I snapped this face, within a few minutes after the storm was gone.
With so many stories of tragedy in the camps, how did you ultimately decide where to focus?
Chikwendiu: Every case was extreme, so I looked for extremities within the extreme. Women would have babies with them in the clinics. I would look for a young mother there, and then I would ask about her family. That’s when the stories became even more tragic than just some of the people in the general population.
Then, when I finally approached her, she started to talk about her and her baby and nursing. That’s when she tells me that she’s nursing but she has no milk. And she thinks that she doesn’t have any milk because of the trauma she experienced. Having her whole village bombed in the middle of the night. And having so many people killed in front of her face and having to scatter from her village.
So, here’s this mother. She’s nursing with no milk. So, her breasts then become, instead of feeding tools, they become just pacifiers.
Why are you a photojournalist who wants and needs to be in places like this?
Chikwendiu: For some reason, since I was young, I had this strong sense of right and wrong — even though I didn’t always live by it. I’ve done my wrong. But I had a strong sense of justice and injustice.
Being African American, too. I remember being in the eighth-grade, running out of the class –- crying, bawling –- when I saw the history of Africans in the U.S.
I remember the teacher. It was one of my favorite teachers, one of my favorite teachers still … I remember her following me out of class and comforting me. She told me, “This is the truth. This is what happened. You can’t run from it.” So from then on, I started not running from it, but being one of the people who show other people the truth. Because only from the truth can we get to a better place.
There are a lot of good things about the world, but there are some bad things going on that aren’t necessary. It has been, I felt like, a mission that’s bigger than me, to tell these stories. And even though people know about them, they don’t know about them enough. They have to see them.
Editor’s Note: This story was modified Feb. 18, 2009.
