Through the Lens of Life: The Remarkable Photographer’s Life of Walter A. Heinsen

Together with the BallinStadt Emigration Museum, the Amerikazentrum Hamburg presents the special exhibition “Through the Lens of Life”. In it, Los Angeles-born filmmaker John Heinsen offers fascinating insights into the spectacular photographic legacy of his grandfather Walter A. Heinsen, from 5 December 2023 to 29 February 2024.

Walter A. Heinsen (1899-1984) began his career at the age of 16 as a German war photographer in France. He fled the turmoil of the Weimar Republic and finally emigrated from Hamburg to the USA in 1923. Over the following 50 years, with his patented “Bunnygraph” he established himself as one of Chicago's most successful children's photographers. “The fascinating biography of Walter A. Heinsen is representative of many emotional migration stories and shows once again the importance of immigration and emigration in society's focus,” says Volker Reimers, managing director of BallinStadt.

For John Heinsen, presenting his grandfather's roughly 100-year-old war photos symbolises honouring all veterans of the First World War. In working through the history, he continually searched for the families of the first American prisoners of war captured in 1917 during the Battle of Cambrai. In 2018, for example, he located relatives of a British soldier shown in one of Walter A. Heinsen's prisoner-of-war photographs and gave them the photograph. “Through John Heinsen's commitment, Walter A. Heinsen's war photographs take on new meanings - those of visual memory and of human connection,” says Laura Langford, chair of the Amerikazentrum in Hamburg. “I feel honoured to be able to show my grandfather's photographs in Hamburg - a place that always meant a great deal to him,” adds John Heinsen.

Special exhibition “Through the Lens of Life” from 5 December 2023 to 29 February 2024 at the BallinStadt Emigration Museum. Included in the museum's admission price.