Santi Palacios: "It had been a long time since I had seen images that stuck with me like this"

Santi Palacios (Madrid, 37 years old) says that from minute one he knew that the photo worked.

It was one of the first that he published in 5W magazine about the massacre perpetrated by the Russian army in the city of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.

It was April 2.

Palacios, like so many of the reporters trying to reach the town, finally managed to enter Bucha along with a group of Greek colleagues.

The Russian soldiers had fled to the northern border, but not before unleashing their weapons on dozens of civilians.

More than 400 people were killed.

“It is a very atypical image”, says the photojournalist, “and it has to do with the silence it transmits, with the fact that it shows something strange: several corpses in the middle of a street with nothing around”.

At first glance, five lifeless bodies can be counted, but,

As Palacios describes from memory, there is more in the background.

He used a short lens and was lost in the depth of the field that captured the target of him up to a dozen dead.

Corpses of civilians on Yablunska street, in Bucha, after the withdrawal of Russian troops, on April 2.Santi Palacios

That image has been awarded the Ortega y Gasset Award for Best Photography, which Palacios collects this Wednesday at the CaixaForum in Valencia.

The Bucha street that the Madrid photojournalist immortalized is called Yablunska.

That road, a humble road next to houses with gabled roofs so traditional in Ukraine far from the big city, is already one of the symbols of the ruthless Russian invasion.

But Palacios didn't know that yet when he took to the streets that second day in April.

He had already seen corpses in the patios of some houses;

she had listened to the stories of neighbors, of survivors.

"Upon arriving at this place, what was impressive was that there was no noise," Palacios narrates.

“I remained standing next to my companions watching, trying to reconstruct what had happened, until we saw a soldier and we asked him about it.

He told us that he didn't know what had happened, that he had come after us."

publication

of which he is the founder.

This Sociology graduate, who soon wanted to unite his passion for photography and journalism, has won a World Press Photo (2017) and, on two occasions, the National Photography Award (2015 and 2016).

“It had been a long time since I had seen images that stayed with me like those of Yablunska,” admits the photojournalist, although it is not the worst thing he has faced with his camera.

“I have worked a lot in rescues in the Mediterranean and it is more difficult for me when there are people at risk of death”, he explains, “it is something that is happening, it is harder”.

"How do you digest something like Bucha's?"

―It has always helped me a lot to know that my work fulfills a function, that these images will be published.

They themselves, the survivors, are very interested in me telling it.

There is a lot of journalism to contribute and that helps me stay focused.

During the conversation, the Madrid photojournalist insists on talking about the “details” behind a photograph like the one on that Yablunska street.

“The first day was so wild,” he recounts, “we could imagine something like that, but not that much.

There was no time for details, everything was very graphic”.

Palacios returned to Bucha one day, and another, and another.

“We went back for the details,” he continues, “I went to visit those survivors, meet the relatives who arrived.

That is where the stories of violence arise, the violations of the Russian army, and stories such as, for example, that of a son who found her mother dead in a residence ”.

The details, he continues, that with his work can be evidence in court of possible war crimes.