Katja Heinemann is a German photographer based in Brooklyn, NY.
Katja Heinemann is a human rights advocate, educator, visual journalist and community media organizer at home in Berlin and Brooklyn.
In her role at Reporters without Borders (RSF) Katja oversees the Berlin section's direct assistance programs and heads a variety of fellowship programs.
As a journalist, Katja's multimedia productions and portrait reportage have been published in Time Magazine, Der Spiegel, Stern, Brigitte, People, US News & World Report, Parade, Sonntagszeitung and De Morgen, among others. She also produced visual communications materials for corporate and institutional clients, and not-for-profit entities (AARP, The Southern Poverty Law Center, Shriver Center for Poverty Law).
Katja's work focuses on identity, stigma, and representation, covering public health and migration, aging and youth issues with a focus on community building efforts to counter discrimination and social exclusion. THE GRAYING OF AIDS and ON BORROWED TIME are widely published and exhibited multimedia documentaries discussing how people face the stigma of HIV/AIDS. In 2014, the GRAYING OF AIDS project created a City of NY bus shelter educational campaign on sexuality and aging. In 2015, the project was commissioned to produce a traveling exhibition and campaign for Walgreens: WELL BEYOND HIV.
Katja's issue-reporting has also focused on migration. In NYC, she has portrayed Chinatown communities, activism, and youth culture; a long-term documentary is investigating the historic 1993 Golden Venture human smuggling tragedy and the fate of its survivors.
In Berlin, her work with young Afghan refugees facing Germany's slow-grinding asylum bureaucracy centers around collaborative journalism, community building, and political art-making. She also served as project mentor and co-director for the Berlin youth journal on arts and culture plus media training program, WAS GEHT?! Magazin.
Katja has taught photojournalism as an adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and has lectured widely.
