Exodus, destruction and humanitarian aid: Valencian portraits of the war
No full democracy today would choose as a national day the holy war of a Christian king of the 13th century or the conquest of new transatlantic territories for the Trastámara of the 15th century.. However, the disease of origins, which infected nineteenth-century romantic Europe, caused the new national and regional collective identities to search for a remote past that would legitimize their contemporary political and cultural purposes.. Thus, after a long process, between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, national spirits, mass commemorative exercises, nationalisms and their consequent industrialized wars germinated..
In 1855, during the Crimean War between the Russian Empire and a British and French coalition, for the first time in history a journalist captured war snapshots. Photographer Roger Fenton was sent by the British crown to show, in the Illustrated London News, the friendly side of the battle. The anti-war story of the popular newspaper The Times had to be neutralized with images of soldiers posing relaxed, talks in the camps and arid landscapes of Balaklava that conveyed calm and pride to British public opinion.. The founding act of war reporting turned out to be government media manipulation. Just seven years later, American photographers would reflect the massacres of their Civil War.
For almost two centuries, war photojournalism has shown the harshness of armed conflicts, and year after year World Press Photo rewards some of these captures. On October 17, the contest will arrive at the Chirivella Soriano Foundation of Contemporary Art, in Valencia, with an image of the Ukraine contest as the winner. In the 2006 edition, Benito Pajares (Palencia, 1954) was one of the winners.
This photographer, Valencian by adoption, developed his entire professional career in the city of Turia. Now, retired, he works as a volunteer in the local NGO Together for Life, with which he traveled to Ukraine on March 1, 2022. “I came to Valencia in the mid-eighties, following the woman who is now my wife.. And it was here where the photography bug hit me.. I set up a store with a studio on Avenida del Cid and started traveling to make photo reports.. Around 1995, I started working in the Valencian delegation of El Mundo and until the 2008 crisis my work as a photojournalist worked well.. The World Press Photo is something like the Oscars of photojournalism and has a certain prestige, but I continued with my work without more or less offers.. It was anecdotal although it is still an honor,” remembers Benito..
That distinction came after a report in the Sahara. Among the destinations of the Palentine are nations such as Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Philippines, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Mozambique, the Philippines, Cambodia and India.. “I was looking for a topic on which to focus my report and, once this was resolved, I traveled to the country in question. Above all, I was interested in social and documentary themes, but I also came across conflict zones, such as Donbas in 2015.. The Together for Life foundation has been bringing Ukrainian children from the Chernobyl region to Valencian territory for decades twice a year.. When the Russian bombings began throughout Ukraine, in 2022, we went to Medyka, on the Polish border, to try to transfer refugees to Spain,” says Pajares, “in March, 3,000 to 5,000 people passed through there every day, we told all our contacts that if they arrived in Medyka, the buses would be waiting and we would provide them with shelters in Valencia”.
When the avalanche of refugees over the border stopped, Pajares entered Ukraine, along with his companions, to supply food, medicine and clothing to the population that decided to remain in their homes.. It was April 2022. “Every month a truck from the foundation continues to arrive in Ukraine. I have seen missiles flying over us daily, but people act as if life continues as normal, despite the escalation of the conflict. Many do not consider leaving there even if we make it possible for them, they want to live in their houses even though they are destroyed,” explains the cameraman, “the first time we heard an alarm in Lviv, people ran looking for protection wherever they could.. Now the alerts are sounding and the Ukrainians lead a normal life, unless a bomb falls in their area.”.
Pajares' intention was not to make a photographic report, but to help as another volunteer.. Even so, over three months he portrayed the Ukrainian reality and the consequences of the bombings on the civilian population, capturing one of the few Valencian professional documents related to the Russian-Ukrainian war.. His work “Destination life. Photographic chronicle of the Ukrainian exodus” was inaugurated at the La Nau Cultural Center and is currently exhibited at the Alboraia House of Culture. “The time I was there, from March to May, I carried a humanitarian aid box in one hand and my camera in the other.. On the Polish border I found fellow journalists, but in April it began to empty of press. Today's freelance reporting involves risking your life in a fire zone to earn a pittance, as I confirmed with a young journalist, with hardly any experience, who made connections for a private Spanish television.. Now, with a new open conflict in the Middle East, the media focus will shift and we will probably forget Ukraine for a while,” concludes the veteran photographer..