Event: Donna DeCesare, associate professor of journalism at The University of Texas at Austin, will present a visual lecture, followed by a QandA, on “Destiny’s Children: A Legacy of War and Gangs.”
In her “Destiny’s Children” project, DeCesare follows the lives of four young people marked by the experience of war. Each struggles with difficult circumstances and has to face the lure of gangs. Told in images with bilingual text, the stories explore the complexity of their experiences with compassion and political insight.
This event is free and open to the public.
When: 7 p.m., April 19.
Where: The Thompson Conference Center room 1.110 on The University of Texas at Austin campus.
Background: DeCesare’s work has appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world, including The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek and The Atlantic. She also has worked as a video journalist and producer on numerous documentaries for The Learning Channel, including the Emmy Award-winning “Killer Virus.”
She is best known for her groundbreaking photographic reportage on the spread of Los Angeles gangs in Central America. Her exhibition “Sharing Secrets” — 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 — helped UNICEF to develop protocols for photographing children at risk.
The event is sponsored by the Senior Fellows honors program of the College of Communication, School of Journalism and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies.
