Karah Shaffer is an American producer working within the realms of photography, film, and multimedia. Her work has been featured on CNN, in The Detroit Free Press, The New York Times, NPR, KCRW, The Atlantic, and other publications. She has produced feature documentary films that have premiered on the American film festival circuit and are currently streaming on major platforms such as iTunes, Amazon Prime and Netflix. Her multimedia works and installations have exhibited around the world. Shaffer is a Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow (2017 Cultural Innovators Forum and 2019 Forum on Media, Democracy and Public Trust in a Post-Truth Era) and Guest Scholar (Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change’s 2019 program The Cost of Disbelief: Fracturing Societies and the Erosion of Trust), a National Edward R. Murrow Award Recipient for Excellence in Innovation, Large Market Radio, and a Creative Visions Creative Activist Program alum.
Shaffer is executive director of Facing Change: Documenting America (FCDA). Created by photojournalists in 2009, FCDA is a 501c-3 nonprofit addressing our era of great challenges in the United States through photographs and narratives, in collaboration with the Library of Congress. Shaffer co-founded, organized and launched Documenting DETROIT, the Motor City’s first-ever documentary photography fellowship, pairing emerging photographers with award-winning media content creators to produce human-centered stories recasting the narrative of Detroit. The project is sponsored by Fujifilm, and has partnered with the Detroit Institute of Arts, Red Bull Arts, University of Michigan, DLECTRICITY Festival, and Photoville to exhibit works. The Documenting DETROIT Project is supported in part by PhotoWings, and is a winner of a 2017 Knight Arts Challenge grant, multiple National Endowment of the Arts grants, and Michigan Council of Arts and Cultural Affairs grants.