For nearly ten years, the Syrian photographer Serbest Salih has been main free pictures workshops in southern Turkey, driving a caravan that serves as a cellular darkroom from city to city and handing out autofocus cameras and movie to the native children to doc their lives. In 2021, Salih revealed a e book of his college students’ pictures. Final 12 months, he was named one in every of GQ’s “Males of the 12 months”. And this summer season, Salih launched his personal organisation, Fotohane Darkroom with the Turkish photographer Amar Kılıç—persevering with to work in southwestern Turkey with a view to “deliver hope and sweetness into the lives of youngsters affected by battle and conflict”.
Like Salih himself, lots of his younger college students are refugees—a few of the hundreds of thousands who’ve fled Syria for Turkey ever for the reason that civil conflict broke out in 2011. Salih is initially from Kobanî, Syria, proper subsequent to the Turkish border. He crossed the border in 2014, finally settling in Mardin, a historic metropolis about 250km to the east.
Fotohane Darkroom scholar {photograph} Courtesy Fotohane Darkroom
Fotohane Darkroom’s lessons deliver collectively kids of various ages and from quite a lot of backgrounds. The workshops begin with classes on composition and pictures as a way of documenting social points, then the youngsters are let unfastened to {photograph} no matter they need. After a pair weeks, they study to develop their very own movie and make prints within the black-and-white darkroom. Thereafter, they work independently, with Salih and Kılıç performing as mentors.
“We’re at all times making an attempt to alter the programme and technique of the workshops,” Salih says. “We’re additionally studying from the youngsters. It’s an trade of studying between us.”
Fotohane Darkroom scholar {photograph} Courtesy Fotohane Darkroom
The workshops not solely give college students an opportunity to specific themselves and study the fundamentals of pictures, but additionally to get to know one another. It’s as a lot an artwork class as a community-building train—one thing that’s more and more vital, since tensions have been rising within the area on account of financial hardship and political strife. Salih and Kılıç train the lessons in Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic. They encourage the youngsters’ households to get to know one another as nicely.
A part of Fotohane Darkroom’s mission is “nurturing childhoods and combating stereotypes, offering alternatives for kids to develop, study and embrace their youth at their very own tempo”. That is evident within the photos the scholars create—of their pals, households, pets and environment. Maybe surprisingly, given their proximity to conflict, the photographs are sometimes joyful. Simply children being children.
Fotohane Darkroom is at all times searching for used cameras to offer its college students. Donations could also be mailed on to Şar, 224 Sarısu Sokak No: 3, 47100 Artuklu/Mardin, Turkey. Or contact [email protected].
