Kay Chernush is an award-winning photographer with more than 30 years experience in commercial and fine art photography. Based in Washington DC, her assignments have taken her all over the world for major magazines, Fortune 500 corporations and both nonprofit and governmental agencies. Her fineart work includes an exploration of prejudice and empathy, “The Us & The They,” and a series of self-portraits entitled “Self-Examination,” a meditation in words and images of her experience with breast cancer. An assignment on human trafficking resulted in the series “Bought & Sold: Voices of Human Trafficking,” and the creation of her nonprofit organization ArtWorks for Freedom, which uses the power of all forms of art to fight human trafficking. Kay’s images can be viewed at www.kaychernush.com and www.artworksforfreedom.org.
The world is before you 2020
Archival digital pigment print
This work is inspired by James Baldwin: "The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in." It is a response to the covid lock down. At first I didn't mind. But after the murder of George Floyd and when the protests erupted, I longed to be on the outside, in the ferment and explosive energy of that particular moment, before the optimism faded.
Plato's Cave2020
Archival digital pigment print
Disconnected, I recycle and deconstruct. I appropriate, even my own work. With the world cut off I dive deep into the cave of memory and try to re-imagine. Does this shadow lie on the surface or in the depths? What happens when the light falls away, when this shape is juxtaposed with that? I assemble, construct and re-construct. I count on accident and serendipity to see me through, to see with new eyes. The words "only connect" take on new meaning.