Sharing Stories: Donna DeCesare’s photojournalism in Latin America

Walking into Donna DeCesare’s office is not unlike stepping into a quiet sanctuary. Her office is strewn with beautiful, brightly colored textiles from Guatemala, artifacts from a world that has shaped much of DeCesare’s life and work. The assistant professor at the School of Journalism at The University of Texas at Austin has a story for each one, which she shares readily, but the real stories DeCesare tells are narrated with images rather than words.

Telling stories is central to DeCesare’s work as a photojournalist. In the early 1990s, DeCesare began documenting the spread of Los Angeles gang culture into El Salvador and the effect this movement had on the young people involved. She lived in Central America during times of war, reporting the news and getting to know the people she lived among, especially the children. She saw homeless children who were addicted to glue, as well as young girls who had turned to prostitution in order to earn a living. The more time she spent with the children of these war-torn countries, the more compelled she felt to tell their stories.

“People have a biased view of indigenous culture and people,” she explains. “Both negative and positive stereotypes are potentially damaging; positive stereotypes make problems invisible. When people’s struggles are invisible, it’s difficult for them to get the help they need.”

For DeCesare, photojournalism is about creating compassion and telling a story in a way that inspires people to want to get involved. But that isn’t as easy as it might sound.

“There is a real problem with ‘compassion fatigue,’” she says, frowning slightly. “As a culture, we are turned off by images of people in dire or horrific circumstances. It’s hard to get people to look at that. But if I take photographs that arrest attention because they are beautiful and colorful — photographs where the truth and horror arise surprisingly — then people will look, and if they look then maybe they’ll pay attention.”

Her most recent project, documenting the stories of stigmatized children in post-war Guatemala and Colombia, led her right to the heart of sensitive storytelling. To be successful, she had to capture images people would want to look at, but she also needed to protect the rights and identities of the children she worked with. Over time, she developed a relationship of trust with the children she photographed, allowing her to capture them in rare moments of candidness. The resulting images are beautiful, as well as telling: some are striking in their unexpected honesty, others haunting. The emotional range presented in the photographs is breathtaking.

But DeCesare’s involvement in Latin America doesn’t stop at her role as photojournalist. Some of the most important work she does is as a teacher and liaison, supporting local journalists and helping them tell their own stories. She says it is easy for American journalists to enter a developing country and use the local journalists for their resources and information without recognizing their talent or their own ability to tell the stories of their country. DeCesare feels it is important to empower local journalists with information and opportunity rather than merely usurping their voices.

Realizing that journalists often face considerable danger when telling stories in their own countries, DeCesare thinks it is important for journalists who are not from those countries to help local journalists gain access to publishing in foreign channels where necessary.

Speaking of her time working with journalists in Guatemala, she says, “It’s important to give back to the local journalists and help them tell their own stories. We can help other journalists tell their stories by giving them a safe place to speak.”

Further contributing to the goal of journalistic cooperation, DeCesare trains and supports photojournalists in Guatemala and Colombia at interactive conferences that review new technologies and discuss ethical issues in journalism, among other issues.

DeCesare sits on the Advisory Board of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, and is a fellow of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, where she does outreach to Latin American journalists, encouraging them to apply for grants through the center and get involved in the center’s work.

Earlier this year, she was a judge and keynote speaker at the awards ceremony for the New Journalism Foundation’s contest for journalism in Spanish- and Portuguese-language media. The $25,000 New Journalism prize awarded to the best published work in the categories of photojournalism, print reporting, online journalism and TV and radio broadcast reportage is the most prestigious international award for Spanish- and Portuguese-language journalists. Founded by Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the New Journalism Foundation taps internationally recognized professionals like DeCesare for training workshops as well as competition judging.

Her latest project, “Sharing Secrets: Children’s Portraits Exposing Stigma” from the Moving Walls 12 group photography exhibition is on display at the Open Society Institute’s New York office until May 11, 2007. Read DeCesare's Artist's Statement; view her online gallery.

BY Amber Simmons