After receiving my MA, I had a number of short jobs in history projects, and I edited, among other things, a couple of film festival programmes. Technically, I was a doctoral student at the university, but my never-ending lack of money forced me to look for work. The Edita publishing house was working on a new history textbook series in the mid-1990s and was looking for a photojournalist. Some of my study mates had worked for Edita and recommended me, and I received a brief introduction to the work from the photographic researcher Jukka Kukkonen.

The work was a great combination of general knowledge and the visual side. I spent the first years running around photo offices and archives searching for slides and photos. I once calculated that I had as much as 5,000 photos on my desk at various stages of work: either to be presented to editors and authors, laid out in a book or returned to some archive. The work definitely required care and organisational skills. As photojournalist, I worked closely with authors, graphic designers and editors alike. Later on I also trained others in photojournalism.

At the beginning of the 21st century, work shifted ever more onto the Internet. Old-fashioned slides were no longer used and quality checks were performed using Photoshop instead of illuminated desks. At the turn of the millennium, the field of publishing was experiencing massive upheavals, offering an excellent view over a disappearing and appreciated sector. I had time to see the technical directors, reprographers and column typesetters at work. Proof-readers and content checkers were still different people, and editors and photojournalists took care of their own areas of work. The tightly-crammed publishing business of today requires one editor to take care of the work of multiple professionals, and you hardly ever see the title of “photojournalist” in books anymore.