Katja Heinemann, a photographer and longform journalist, is producing a multimedia documentary that investigates the interconnection of migration and social media use among young Afghan refugees in Berlin. She is also completing a photography project that examines and critiques the role visual media plays in shaping our collective understanding of global displacement.
Heinemann’s work looks at social and cultural topics such as illness and stigma, and youth culture and immigration. Her recent multimedia projects include a new-media documentary on HIV/AIDS (On Borrowed Time), about children and teenagers in the United States living with HIV/AIDS, and The Graying of AIDS, on the global aging of the pandemic. She has also investigated the fate of Chinese migrants and refugees who survived the 1993 Golden Venture human smuggling ship disaster. From 2012 to 2014, she was an adjunct assistant professor of photojournalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.