Donna De Cesare

Donna De Cesare is a documentary photographer and an associate professor at the University of Texas School of Journalism. For over 20 years she has been exploring youth identity and gang violence in Central America. Her project, “Destiny’s Children: A Legacy of War and Gangs” follows the lives of four young people marked by an experience of war and its aftermath.

Her photographs have been widely exhibited and appeared in news and arts publications including: The New York Times Magazine, Life, Mother Jones, DoubleTake and Aperture. 

She is recipient of an Emmy award, the Dorothea Lange Prize, The Alicia Patterson Fellowship, the Mother Jones International Photo Fund Award, the Soros Independent Project fellowship and most recently a Fulbright Fellowship in Colombia. De Cesare is currently documenting narratives of loss and survival among those who have suffered paramilitary violence in Colombia. Images and text from this project published on the Web site Crimes of War won a top award in the National Press Photographer’s Best of Photojournalism contest. Since the New York opening of her 2006 exhibition Sharing Secrets it has traveled to Washington DC, Korea, Poland and China.