Donna DeCesare
Photo by Eli Reed
Associate Professor
Office: CMA A5.150E
Phone: 512-471-1980
E-mail: donna.decesare@austin.utexas.edu
Donna DeCesare’s website
An award-winning photographer, videographer and journalist with a focus on Latin American issues, Donna DeCesare joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in the spring semester 2002 after a 20 year professional career as a freelance visual reporter covering stories in the US, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
Early in her career she covered conflicts in Northern Ireland and in Central America. Based in El Salvador during the last years of that country’s civil war, DeCesare reported and photographed from the region for leading US and European newspapers. Among the many news and arts publications that have featured DeCesare’s photographs are: The New York Times Magazine, Life, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, DoubleTake, and Aperture. Since 1995, she also has worked as a video journalist and producer on numerous documentaries for The Learning Channel. “Killer Virus,” her first collaboration with TLC won an Emmy Award in 1996.
DeCesare is perhaps most widely known for her groundbreaking reportage on the spread of Los Angeles gangs in Central America, work which garnered significant competitive grant support and major national and international awards among them: an Alfred Eistendstadt magazine photography award (2000), a Canon photo essay award in Pictures of the Year (2000), and an award for reporting on criminal justice from the National Center on Crime and Delinquency.
DeCesare's internationally competitive grants and fellowships include the Dorothea Lange Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University (1993), a New York Foundation for the Arts photography grant (1996), an Alicia Patterson Fellowship (1997), the Mother Jones International Photo Fund grant (1999), a George Soros Independent Project Fellowship (2001), and most recently a (2005) Fulbright Fellowship.
Her exhibition, “Destiny’s Children/Hijos del Destino,” culled from nearly 20 years following the stories of US and Latin American youth impacted by gangs, has been exhibited all over the world, most recently at the Photo biennale at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Guangzhou China in May-July 2009. A selection of this work was exhibited at the Harry Ransom Center in 2008 and is currently in the HRC permanent photographic collections.
View an interview at the HRC with Professor DeCesare
See interview with Professor DeCesare on New York's Grit TV
Download profile of Professor DeCesare in the July 2008 issue of Austin Woman
Since coming to the University of Texas, DeCesare has begun several new documentary projects. Her initial work on her latest project documenting narratives of loss and survival among those who have suffered paramilitary violence in Colombia was published on the Web site “Crimes of War” winning a top prize in the Best of Photojournalism in 2002.
A Fulbright fellowship and Dean’s leave in 2005 resulted in the 2006 exhibition series, “Sharing Secrets: Children’s Portraits Exposing Stigma” which has traveled to New York, Washington, D.C., Korea, Poland and China. It is currently on view at the Open Society Institute office of Public Health in New York City where it is scheduled to remain till winter 2010. These photographs and testimonies from children in Guatemala and Colombia who are former child soldiers, survivors of sexual abuse, or who live with the stigma of HIV aided UNICEF in developing protocols for photographing children at risk.
Hear her speak about her work with the Director of Photography for UNICEF
A Mellon Summer research grant from the Lozano Long Center for Latin American studies provided vital support for her work photographing and teaching photography in a women’s prison in Colombia in 2008. The project resulted in a dual exhibition in the prison and at the Colombo Americano art gallery in Medellin as part of the Desearte Paz series. A video about the project (in Spanish) can be seen here.
DeCesare is currently shaping this work for publication and has created an educational lecture featuring some of the work which will be published in the Winter 2010 issue of Nieman Reports and will be available in video format at the website of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at the University of Columbia graduate School of Journalism in early 2010.
DeCesare holds an M. Phil degree in Literature and Comparative Studies from the University of Essex in England. When she is not teaching at the University of Texas she lectures, exhibits, publishes and continues to photograph. She also finds time to mentor young photographers in other parts of the world conducting photography workshops for at-risk youth, journalism students and professional photojournalists in the US, Spain, Latin America and most recently in 2009 in China.
Upcoming Exhibitions, Publications and Speaking Events
The Nieman Reports will publish images and text from DeCesare’s lecture on Witness and Ethical collaboration in the winter issue 2010.
In Winter 2010 Donna DeCesare will publish her story about a former gang member—Carlos Perez from Guatemala-- who graduated from The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Austria in June 2009. Her images of Carlos 10 years ago and at his graduation will appear in the Indelible Image section of SMITHSONIAN magazine.
DeCesare will be a Judge during February in the 2009 Pictures of the Year International Contest hosted at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
The seminal work Women in Photography by Dr. Naomi Rosenblum has been expanded updated for a 3rd edition, which will include the work of Professor DeCesare. Publication is scheduled for Spring 2010.
"Sharing Secrets" is currently on exhibition at the offices of the Public Health Program of the Open Society Institute in NY through January 2010.
Donna DeCesare is Curator for Dart Media and coordinates Latin American outreach for the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University School of Journalism (read her curator’s statement).
The generous support of a 2009 Mellon Faculty Summer Research grant from the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies enabled DeCesare to undertake continued field research for her book Destiny’s Children last summer. While in El Salvador, DeCesare also participated in collaborative reporting project mentoring reporters directed by Argentinean writer Cristian Alarcon in collaboration with the Central American Coalition for Youth Violence Prevention. The first article from the project, which includes a gallery of DeCesare’s photographs, is published by CIPER of Chile and can be seen in Spanish here.
A text and photo essay appears in the current issue of NACLA “Salvadoran Gangs: Brutal Legacies and a Desperate Hope”
Click here to see an online interactive resume of Professor DeCesare’s current and recent exhibitions, publications and lectures.
Recent Courses: J370K Visual Multimedia, J380M Advanced Documentary Projects in Photography, J388 Critical Issues in Photographic practice. J395.3 Documentary Video and J395.4 The Documentary Tradition in Latin America; J316 Visual Communication