1944–2022 

Kay Chernush was an internationally acclaimed photographer who made fine art and commercial images for more than 40 years. 

Kay passed away on February 15, 2022, in Washington DC from complications of a stroke. An intrepid traveller, cancer survivor, and champion of the enslaved and exploited, Kay radiated warmth and an irrepressible joie de vivre. 

Based in the DC area, her assignments and interests took her all over the world in search of the "transforming moment" — using her camera to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, to make visible the poetry and drama in the mundane and banal. 

Kay launched her freelance career in 1980, photographing more than 50 feature stories for Smithsonian magazine and many other national publications. Among her corporate, governmental, and nongovernmental clients were the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, T. Rowe Price, General Dynamics, Siemens, Lafarge, Intel, Discovery Communications, MedImmune, the Maryland Port Administration, US Airways, the US Department of State, the World Bank, Free the Slaves, and the International Cocoa Initiative. 

Her fine art work was exhibited in solo and juried group exhibitions and is included in the permanent collections of the World Bank, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and the National Institutes of Health and in private collections in the US and internationally.

Kay will be dearly missed by friends and family and by artists all over the world.