Donna DeCesare

Donna De Cesare joined the UT Faculty following a 20-year career as an award-winning freelance visual journalist. She continues to report on Latin America and is an affiliate faculty with the Benson / Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies at UT. Professor De Cesare is a 2013 Recipient of the Maria Moors Cabot Award for Journalism Enhancing InterAmerican Understanding. This prestigious award is the oldest prize for foreign correspondence and like the Pulitzer is a major career recognition bestowed by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 

Donna has received numerous honors for her documentary photography, including top awards from Pictures of the Year International, the National Press Photographers Association, the Dorothea Lange/Paul Taylor Prize, the Mother Jones Award for Social Documentary Photography, multiple Open Society Foundation grants, and a Fulbright Fellowship. Her work has been exhibitedinternationally at venues across France, Mexico, China, El Salvador, Germany, Italy, and the United States, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Brooklyn Museum, and the 2016 Venice Biennale. 

Donna is the author of the bilingual documentary book Unsettled / Desasosiego: Children in a World of Gangs, published by the University of Texas Press in 2013. The book won recognition in the Best Photographic book category of Pictures of the Year international and has been favorably reviewed in numerous publications a handful of which are mentioned here–– AfterImage, the New York Times, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, PRI's The World, and numerous NPR programs including Latino USA with Maria Hinojosa. 

In addition to her documentary work, Donna De Cesare is also Master Teacher with the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation for Latin American Journalism and a consultant to the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, at Columbia University. Her work with UNICEF in the early 2000s assisted in development of protocols for photographing children at risk now widely adopted by leading NGOs. 

For additional information about Professor De Cesare's projects, exhibitions, publications and workshop teaching please visit her website .