A travelling dark room is helping refugee children express themselves

“I needed to take a selfie otherwise. I needed it to be one thing that belongs to me,” reads the caption on {a photograph} taken by 10-year-old Elif, who attended considered one of Sirkhane Darkroom’s images workshops in Akdogan, a rural village in Turkey. On one other picture, by eight-year-old Ishak, the caption merely reads: “My good friend”.

Housed in a cell caravan, this distinctive darkroom has been travelling to villages alongside the Turkish and Syrian border since 2019, providing workshops to refugee and native kids. This 12 months, director Serbest Salih has turned his consideration to the cities of Adiyaman and Kahramanmaraş – each on the epicentre of February’s devastating earthquakes – to assist displaced kids specific themselves by way of artwork.

“Analogue images is a therapeutic course of for kids,” says Salih, a Syrian refugee himself, who was pressured to flee his hometown of Kobani eight years in the past and settle within the Turkish metropolis of Mardin within the south-east, not removed from the Syrian border. “With digital, we are able to delete it. However analogue gives the chance to study and examine, to make new associates and have discussions. On the finish of the workshop, once they see the end result, the youngsters begin believing in themselves and understanding that images doesn’t have guidelines, that there isn’t a dangerous or ugly picture.”

A part of Sirkhane Darkroom’s mission is to attach with refugees in hard-to-reach villages on the Syrian-Turkish border, a melting pot of cultures and shared languages. “We noticed that individuals might talk with one another, however the refugees weren’t getting the prospect to combine, in order that’s after we obtained the thought of utilizing the facility of images to carry kids collectively,” says Salih, who studied images at Aleppo College, earlier than fleeing to Turkey, the place he started to work as a photographer for humanitarian and non-profit organisations. “I converse 4 languages however images is a novel language for me as a result of, as a refugee, it helps to precise myself and transfer on from my trauma.”

The travelling darkroom adapts its workshops to swimsuit the youngsters and vary from 4 to 12-week programmes. Salih additionally makes use of the medium of images as a technique to train the youngsters about topics past the darkroom. This 12 months, he has targeted on psychosocial topics to help earthquake victims, equivalent to gender equality and youngsters’s rights. “What struck me once I arrived within the earthquake-affected areas was the shortage of entry to training,” says Salih, including that there are some faculty camps, however after the trauma of the earthquake, not all kids really feel comfy taking part.

When studying about composition and perspective, for instance, Salih ensures that native and refugee kids of various sexes are partnered collectively, and teaches them about well-known feminine photographers. “A lot of them don’t know that there are feminine artists,” Salih explains. “We’re attempting to indicate them that there are not any gender limitations in artwork.”

In the course of the workshops, the youngsters are every given a digicam to take residence for per week and shoot no matter conjures up them. One boy, as he watched the solar set over his village, mentioned: “I felt peace inside me, so I took a photograph.” One other lady, who didn’t personal a single {photograph} of her mom, requested if she would pose for her. “Culturally, girls might be fairly shy about being in photographs, however her mom agreed,” says Salih.

Again on the darkroom, Salih reveals them easy methods to develop the movie and the response is considered one of awe. “Is it magic? How are you doing that?” they ask, in surprise. However Salih is equally amazed by innovation from the youngsters. After he taught nine-year-old Dua to print a destructive, she then positioned the destructive contained in the enlarger – a sort of projector – and put her hand over it, with a purpose to print her hand with the destructive. It’s the same method to photogram – a cameraless images method. “Throughout all my working life, I’ve by no means seen anybody do that,” says Salih. “It’s actually artistic, so I’m now planning an exhibition on negatives.”

As adults, we can’t see what kids see; they discover the small print of life we’ve stopped seeing

Since 2021, the work produced by Sirkhane Darkoom has travelled past the villages to exhibitions in Istanbul (hosted by the UN) and the UK, in London and Oxford. However Sirkhane Darkroom isn’t with out its challenges, not least the price of images gear. A part of Sirkhane Social Circus College, which is run by Turkish non-profit organisation Artwork Wherever, it depends on donations to hold out the workshops. Politically – and of an even bigger concern to Salih – is the rising anti-refugee sentiment in Turkey, a battleground on this 12 months’s fiercely contested presidential election, with Syrians fearing deportation. “Most of us refugees are apprehensive,” says Salih.

“I’m motivated to proceed due to the outcomes I see,” he says. “As adults, we can’t see what kids see; they discover the small print of life we’ve stopped seeing. They use their imaginations and layer it with actuality.”

Primary picture: On the left, boy with grass, ‘My good friend’, taken by Ishak, aged 8. On the correct, lady leaping, taken by Refai, aged 12, from Alhasake, Syria