At this point, Javier Bauluz (Asturias, Spain, 1960) could resign himself to be a living legend of photojournalism. This man has won his Pulitzer Prize (1995), he’s published in the most distinguished mass media (New York Times, Washington Post, The Independent, Der Spiegel, El País, Newsweek, Time, GEO) and has a pair of books signed by his name. Although he could, he isn’t lowering his guard in any moment. Knowing that journalism (traditional mass media) is no longer what it was, he decided to go back to the roots, and to do it from below. After founding an independent producer -Piraván- , he’s engaged in something that is as simple as it is revolutionary: the new medium periodismohumano.com. A global network of journalists and social organizations make, produce and distribute professional journalism under the human rights approach; all through the web.

In 7.7 we interviewed many photojournalists with different profiles, but your case is peculiar: you take photographs, but you usually talk more about journalism than about your photos. Are you photographer, journalist, photoreporter...?

How do I tell you all this? I started in journalism with photography and I’ve been widening this field in the course of the years, not only taking photographs, but also writing texts, making videos, audio, multimedia formats, etc. This is because I think that in journalism you can tell something in many ways, and I believe that we must use a multiformat to tell these things. The technologies changed so much last years, that now we can tell a story in formats that before were impossible, at least you had much money.

"Now we can tell a story in formats that before were impossible, at least you had much money"

Is not enough, at this moment in time, to be only a journalist or only a photographer?

I’m not telling that this is better or worse, but that you can use all this means that before were not affordable to tell the stories. In some of them, the photography format may be more important because the fixed image keeps having a force that the video or the word does not have, but if you have a good image in movement with a good sound, sometimes this explains better the story. If we can even make with a video, a text, audio and photographs a same product that tells us better and in more depth that story we want to tell, ¿where’s the wrong part of this?

It’s in nowhere. I suppose that the matter keeps being the same as always: which contents we choose to tell, beyond the means we use to make it.

Exactly, I believe that what matters is the content, not the form in which you tell it.

"What matters is the content, not the form in which you tell it"

I’ve got the feeling that parallel to the explosion in the technological means and the easy access to them, which make easier to produce information, there is this phenomenon in which the media produces contents that have less quality and profundity. Do you share this view?

I do not only share this view, but also yell it. This is the problem: in a world where communications are easier and the technologies facilitate communications and the creation of contents, the journalistic information quality is every time lower. It’s lowering to levels that scare me.

Why do you think this happened?

Because in some point of the recent history the traditional media lost its course. Instead of having the news as a priority, the objective became to be the profit motive, in other words, to earn money. This is the main function of the information companies nowadays. Economic and political interests have become to be what manages most of the media. If the news is not regarded as a public service for the citizens, that thanks to them it exists, but it is at the service of economic interest –of someone or someone else’s-, we’ve got the results we’ve got. However, it is also a clear reflection: in this society we are supposed to be in a huge economic crisis that is related to the same thing: everything is worthy if you earn money. It does not matter who die, what they scam, what they cheat: the Monopoly of capitalism’s principal objective is to earn money.

"In some point of the recent history the traditional media lost its course. Instead of having the news as a priority, the objective became to earn money"

And that is the objective of the media’s companies that we do not have to forget that they are companies…

The media’s companies are exactly the same as other companies in this world: the most important thing is to earn money no matters what. You may skip all the ethical questions and the principles, for example which the journalism’s ethical and social functions are. If the journalism stops being a mediator between the powerful ones and the citizens, and goes to have lunch with the powerful ones, the news that may receive the population will not coincide with the reality. If you add to this that the focus it has is on show and entertainment because these are what increase audience, and therefore advertising, and therefore money, though it is rubbish in a 90%.

Perhaps we should not be surprised by the companies’ attitude. Should we think therefore in the journalists and photographers’ responsibility who were working for those companies and the readers who allowed that this kept happening?

There have always been companies and companies. You may go to a butcher’s shop and buy meat of quality, or go to a butcher that starts swindling you and cheats you out of the label or the origin, or sells you rotten meat. Clearly, it’s not the company’s problem, but the companies are fooling with their products. And it’s the citizens’ fault because they do not demand a better quality of products, such as meat, fish or journalism. And the journalists remain there or are in a kind of trap because they are due to the employers, because it’s what they do for a living and things are too bad to be fired, and out of this there is not a space in where they could eat and practice freer, more ethical journalism or how we want to call it.

In order not to fall in an ethical contradiction, should the photographers and journalists’ resources come from the public sector, from companies, from private individuals? Which are the resources that we should find in order to finance ourselves and practice more ethical journalism?

When you find out this, you’ll tell me (they laugh). I cannot trust in that the traditional means will change, at least not at the moment, and will practice journalism of human quality. Therefore, if we want to practice another kind of journalism, how do we afford it? Your aunt, your baker, your niece, a social organization, a private company, a public institution or anyone may be the investor. The important thing is that that money was not earned by exploiting children making luxury shoes in Thailand, for example. And after, that this does not limit the journalist’s independence to tell a story.

"The journalists are in a kind of trap because they are due to the employers, because it’s what they do for a living"

Where do the P+DH reports’ resources come from?

From where I told you. Any economic support from who thinks that human journalism of quality is fair and necessary for this society is welcomed. It’s the same as when some citizens think that there must be whales and they sign in to be a Greenpeace member. Whoever wants human journalism of quality should sign in as a member and support economically in order to make this work, because if we do not have the society support, this may be an adventure that is abandoned in the middle due to the lack of social support. What we must have is a diversity of sources that guarantees, in a way, that even though someone does not like what we do, this person cannot influence our independence or makes us collapse because his/her investment is removed.

You said that it was impossible that the media changed its focus…

It’s not impossible, but difficult…

Therefore, perhaps we should look for the way that people start asking for information of more quality, and that in this case producing less trivial contents become a business. If not, we are always in the same situation: we create alternative means which produce different information, but people keep buying El País and watching Telecinco. If we do not achieve that people ask for another kind of information, it won’t be a business for anyone and it will be unsustainable. May it be the key to start educating the audience?

Of course, but we need the means to educate them, if not they will keep being taught by the means the others have… We must have our own forces and supports which we may look for in the society. It’s so simple and so difficult like that. I give up waiting. I don’t like being the whole day complaining and saying “everything is wrong” and waiting for someone to call me and hire me. I think we should look for the actual and possible formulas, that there are a lot; because I do think that there are many people who demand this kind of journalism.

"I don’t like being the whole day complaining and saying “everything is wrong” and waiting for someone to call me and hire me"

It is also true that the less conventional means, like the one you are making (P+DH), does not have so much audience as the traditional means. Is it possible that people are not interested in other options, that there is a kind of vicious circle?

Clearly, there are many people who prefer watching only football, shows and trash things, but we won’t be responsible for the whole world. We’ll do what we are able to. If one has a vocation, is a journalist and wants to do this kind of journalism, one has the moral obligation to try. Nowadays there are no excuses. Any journalist is able to create his/her own mean of communication on the Internet and to broadcast. Precisely for this, I think that we are in a historic moment; that the journalists must recover their profession’s control, we must recover the social function of journalism. Now we can be technologically independent, something that before was not possible.

"If one has a vocation, is a journalist and wants to do this kind of journalism, one has the moral obligation to try. Nowadays there are no excuses"

Do you think that the photographers and journalists are at these new possibilities level?

I am not responsible for the humanity progress (he laughs). Let’s see, www.periodismohumano.com bases its ideas on: that there are some journalists that want to recover this human journalism with a focus on the human rights, taking into account as the only ethical framework the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in a space where they aren’t subdued by political interest and economic private individuals and they can be independent. All these were part of the Journalism and Human Rights manifest that we signed in Gijón, that since then 2,000 people have signed, many of them are journalists who are working in the means, and have this idea. And every time I tell them what we are doing in a public meeting, their faces show that they think: “please, I want to see other things that I was not taught, I want to know not only what happens with the politicians, not only what the powerful people say”. Yes, it’s absolutely necessary; I do want this kind of journalism.

It might be an idea that many of us share, but an important amount of photographers are just interested in publishing in media such as El País, and they’re not interested in self-managed media governed by this statement. It seems like it’s a basic problem, because even the students, when they reach a professional level, they are more concerned about their ego than the social reality.

I’m not the owner of journalism, neither responsible of all journalists. But we must remember one thing –that not justifies anything-: journalists also have to eat. And so far, the only customers who could be were the media, which are those that pay them a story or a salary, and with what they can eat and continue working. That doesn’t justify at all what you're saying, but it is a reality. Regarding the type of photography it is being done, that's a whole world. There are people out there who try to convince us that to talk about an earthquake, we must take a picture of a crack in a wall, and that explains perfectly the earthquake. Okay, everyone can do exactly what they want. There are people who are bothered by photos of black people, or poor people, because they believe it is old fashioned and who knows what, and you “have to” be more of avant-garde... Journalism is journalism, and not necessarily art. If we want to make art, then let's do it, but please don’t disguise journalism. Everybody is the way he or she is, and has its own human and social responsibility with the world, with their peers, the profession, and so on. Clearly there are many people in this job who could be anywhere else, people that don’t feel the mission of being a journalist.

"There are people out there who try to convince us that to talk about an earthquake, we must take a picture of a crack in a wall, and that explains perfectly the earthquake"

You talked about the artistic photography and the crack in the wall. Sebastián Salgado was at the time criticized for his "aestheticization of poverty." And now there are many Photoshop abusers, for example the case of the photographer who won the Picture of the Year, who shortly lost the prize for the retouching that was done. What’s your opinion about this trend of “over aestheticization” in photojournalism?

If nothing matters more than the final outcome and the economic results, if anything goes, even to manipulate and to deceive the photos, well... But Photoshop is not something new, Stalin ran the Photoshop of that era, with an expert laboratory that made people appear and disappear in the picture, for example. This is not a new thing, the problem is the same: without ethics, without some basic principles of telling the truth, and go only to the aesthetics and profit, it’s a disaster. I think it's wonderful that people make artistic pictures, but it is not the same as photojournalism. I don’t care, and that’s why I don’t get into the approach you talk about. If I tell you that a particular thing is true, and it's not, I'm a liar, no matter if I’m photojournalist, artist, or whatever.

When you won the Pulitzer Prize almost 15 years ago, did it help you to define what you wanted to do, what news to cover and what topics to talk about?

I already decided that when I was a kid…

Did it help you that they let you do it?

Nobody ever let me do anything because I've always done what I wanted. I've been independent my whole life and it has its drawbacks, such as you do not have a check a the end of the month, or security, but you are free to, with almost nothing in your wallet, go anywhere, with your camera, and try to tell what happens there. That they let you or not… It just seems like excuses to me.

"I've been independent my whole life and it has its drawbacks, such as you do not have a check a the end of the month"

The appropriate term might not be that they "let you" but more like they "listen to you": Did the prize give you more of an impact?

That's the only wonderful advantage of prizes: that they let you say a lot of nonsense words like the ones I am saying right now, and even that you will publish them.

What else do the prizes give?

Well, now I'm taller, more handsome, and my photos, which were previously in black and white, turned into colour (laughs). No, only that single thing: it allows you to speak up loudly.

Can photography therefore work as a tool of social transformation, or is that an utopia?

I would add –as with the tobacco: “may" be a tool of social transformation.

What does it depend on?

So many things ... how the picture is, how you express what you express or what you are photographing, the moment when that occurs, the historical context, many things. Not every photograph is a tool for social transformation.

"Not every photograph is a tool for social transformation"

Today, almost everyone has a camera, which in some ways can help each one of us to count our own reality in images, but in another way contributes to discredit the work of the photojournalist.

I assume that journalists have to have a certain role in our society. Journalism is a profession, a craft, and I think it's wonderful that the communications and technological tools allow any citizen to provide information on anything. I think it’s excellent. I think that instead of seeing it as an enemy, we must view it as an opportunity to have many more sources of information to tell things that are produced by citizens. We must think that we’re not the only one who can provide information. For example, maybe you're not in Iran, where there no journalists because they all go prison, or because they throw them out, but people are making videos of what is happening. But one thing that is necessary - and perhaps might be a part of the new craft of journalism- are publishers of such information: people that contrast citizen’s information, give it the point of credibility that is need, who know where and who the information comes from, check that these stories are true; things that are very complicated to do. You can have a lot of information but you might not be sure if believe it or not, because you don’t know who send the information to you.

"One thing that is necessary -and perhaps might be a part of the new craft of journalism- are publishers of such information: people that contrast citizen’s information"

One of the rules of journalism, in theory, is objectivity. But since you’re a social activist as well as a journalist, your approach is part of subjectivity. How do you handle that?

I don’t believe in that objectivity, I don’t believe in impartiality as it’s practiced and as people speak of it. I believe in truthfulness and honesty. I do not think one should be objective or impartial. That false objectivity and false impartiality have produced thousands or millions of victims throughout the history of mankind. And I certainly don’t want to be a part of that. That´s why we want to do journalism under the ethical approach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And human rights mean something very wide: it is not just the issue of torture in Guantanamo. If you want to be a credible journalist, from the human rights approach I have to be truthful and honest, I can’t make propaganda for one side or the other, I can have an angle and point of view from the human rights approach which is now enough to sift the matter.

"I don’t believe in impartiality as it’s practiced and as people speak of it. I believe in truthfulness and honesty"