For many years now and specially in the last few months The Big Question is flying over our heads: is photojournalism dead or in the verge of extintion? The reasons for this are well known: magazines are dedicated to the fatuous and superfluous and the rich and famous. Therefore, there is less space for stories that we deem important, fewer assignments to go to faraway places, little interest for our "concerned" photography. This is the current mainstream line of thinking amongst many photographers and I would like to add my views on the subject.

We often refer to the Golden Age of photojournalism and day dream with names like Life and Look and Eugene Smith and Capa, thinking that those were ideal times, when everybody cared and everything was wonderful. Those times were certainly different but not better in any way to what we have today - after all the battles of Smith with Life are legendary. But besides that: how many photojournalists really worked then and how many work now? How many newspapers and magazines existed at the time and how many are there now? Why do we always talk about the same names and the same work?

We should look closely to the diversity and quality of the material produced today. I personally think, with all due respect to our elders, that Nachtwey or Suau or Peress or Meiselas or Salgado or Richards or Ferrato stand up pretty well to those names. Images produced today are more interesting, innovative, personal, less naive, even more committed. Photographs from 40 or 50 years ago which have been published on and on, thousands of times, are deeply engraved in our memories, we take them for granted, they are part of our lives. Don't get me wrong: I love them and I admire the photographers that took them. But time plays its role just like it does with wine. Yesterday's photojournalism acquires a documentary taste as times passes, a certain nobility, odor, flair.

So, if the worked produced today is one of high standards and there are thousands of magazines and newspapers all over the world, what type of problems are we facing? Why is it that, apparently, the most "interesting" work is being ignored? I think there are two reasons which I would like to explore.

But first another literary story. While I was at the University, in Argentina - I studied Architecture - I was very active politically. It was the time of changing the world - end of the 60's, early 70's - , of seeing the world in black and white, (I still do but only in pictures). It seemed there was no time to spend in matters other than fighting for a more just society. The political group I was enrolled in discouraged any distraction from the great tasks we had to undertake. All other interest were considered bourgeois deviations. But of course human nature is more complicated than that. Because at the same time I was sensible to many other things besides politics and activism. I fell in love, of course, and loved to read and go to the movies and hear music and have fun. And I wanted to study and take pictures and I never ceased to be amazed by the wonders of nature, and space and time and the rest of the many questions about our origins and the future and everything else.