Scratch a photojournalist and you will find a reporter who wields a camera instead of a typewriter. Eternity in a moment, information plus aesthetics. These are the obsessions, and in time of war, the obsessions are intensified. But suppose they gave a war and no photojournalists were invited; a war in which the only war pictures may be some chance shots caught by amateurs?

Such has been the Falklands situation, where the British and Argentine military authorities, not to mention the remote location of the islands, have made the job of the world's photojournalists frustrating in the extreme. One of the few who have succeeded at all is Sygma Agency Photographer J.C. Criton. On assignment for TIME, Criton was able to get on and off the Falklands two weeks ago and send his pictures out of Argentina. His vivid photographs of Argentine troops and weapons on the Falklands were a highlight of last week's TIME. They were the only recent color pictures from the occupied islands to reach the U.S.

Such a photographic blackout is rare in this highly visual age. In response, the photo editor declares a kind of all-out war of his own. In New York, TIME Picture Editor Arnold Drapkin and Picture Researchers Peter Kellner and Robert Stevens assigned photographers to wherever they suspected a picture might conceivably develop. In England, Picture Researcher Brenda Draper posted photographers to the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street, the Ministry of Defense, and places like the naval shipyards in Portsmouth and Plymouth. From Buenos Aires, Picture Researcher Nina Lindley positioned photographers in key locations throughout Argentina.

In this atmosphere, just about every photographer dreamed of executing a stealthy airborne pass over the Falklands. Last week another Sygma photographer and some television cameramen gave it a go by chartering a small private plane. The idea was daring, the result predictable: the plane was fired upon by the Argentines. A prudent and hasty retreat followed. As Master Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt once said, "If you are a reporter, you can be 500 miles behind the line. But a photographer has to be there." Getting there has proved to be quite a problem.

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