On this regard, the Venezuelan law of 1994 refers to these professionals as “graphic reporters” and states that they are able to work without being members of the National Association of Journalists. We gather this means they are lesser journalists than their writing colleagues.

Nevertheless it is possible that the confusion of the exact definition of the profession is due to the phot-journalist concept used by magazines such as National Geographic in which the photographer is also in charge of the texts. In this case, texts and images form a unit that is almost indivisible. Photographs are not complete without the text and vice versa. A photo reporter in Venezuela cannot be compared to a photojournalist as we just described it.

The Spanish writer Joaquin Estefania in his foreword to the book of American author David Randall “The Universal Journalist” said that journalism is the first draft of History. It is in this relationship between journalism and history that photographic journalism finds its spot, since photographs have -since the beginning of photography- served as a tangible evidence of the facts.

If written journalism is the first draft of history , then photography-all photography but specially press photography- is a frozen moment of history. Thanks to photography we are able to see the changes in urban structures, in customs, in garments, and we can put a face on those anonymous or transcendent characters of an ever-evolving society. Even though photographs by themselves do not inform in a strict sense of the word, it does present evidence, something that the written word is unable to do.

El Porteñazo © Héctor Rondón	February 27, 1989 © Tom Grillo

Luis Brito recipient of the 1996 National Photography Award of Venezuela, commented that the graphic reporter “…is an historian as much as any history scholar, the filmmaker or even the television. Furthermore, the image remains, that is what is happening out there, that is history and that is what is being captured by the photo reporter”.

In February 2001, another recipient of the National Photography Award of Venezuela, Jose Sarda agreed with Brito saying that the photo reporter is “like an historian” and added that ”the graphic reporter is the man that somehow stops time. It is the man that can take an instant of something that will become part of the history of a country”. Even though a photo reporter’s job is to look for images to illustrate history, this is a possibility shared by any photographer or even anyone with a camera on their hands.

Sarda himself tells an anecdote. He was sent to Puerto Ordaz to cover the boat accident that caused the death of 36 teachers in 1964 at La Llovizna Park. He and the writer that was with him, found a man that had taken pictures of the accident and he agreed to give them the film. One of the photographs showing the picture of a teacher holding on to a tree root with the water up to his chest was on the front page of the newspaper El Nacional the next morning. So, perhaps the graphic reporter is much more of a photographer than a journalist. We shall say that he is a specialized photographer but not a limited photographer since working in photo journalism does not mean you can not do other kind of photography, on the other hand he is a limited journalist since, at least in Venezuela, his journalistic work is limited to taking photographs.