Sirkhane Darkroom: The photography project bringing refugee and local Turkish children together

In Istasyon, an impoverished neighbourhood on the outskirts of the ancient Turkish city of Mardin, children play under a mulberry tree, occasionally reaching up to pick the ripe berries hanging from the branches.

They each have a small analogue camera which they have been using to take photos of their friends as they run around in the spring sunshine.

The group of nine children, aged between nine and twelve, are a mix of Turks and Syrians who live in the local area and have just returned from school.

Mardin is in the southeast of Turkey, about 20 miles from the Syrian border, and is home to over 85,000 registered Syrian refugees, many of whom live in abandoned tower blocks which were previously owned by the government.

"The photographs the children produce beautifully capture their everyday moments, from playing outside with friends to private moments at home with their family, exploring their local area, and taking selfies. Despite the tough conditions they are living through, their images are brimming with joy"

Turkish, Kurdish, and Syrian children attend free photography workshops held by the Sirkhane Darkroom, a non-profit darkroom and photo lab.

The workshops are led by Serbest Salih, a photographer from Kobani, Syria who fled to Turkey after the Islamic State group attacked his home town in 2014.

The 28-year-old, who speaks Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, and English, describes photography as his “fifth language” which helps him to express himself and heal from the trauma he’s been through.

Now, he’s passing that on to the children, using photography as a tool to build the children’s self-confidence, bridge divides, and bring children together.

The photographs the children produce beautifully capture their everyday moments, from playing outside with friends to private moments at home with their family, exploring their local area, and taking selfies.

Despite the tough conditions they are living through, their images are brimming with joy.

Serbest begins each workshop with games before he hands out donated cameras and teaches them how to shoot their own photos. He talks to them about composition and light, different perspectives, and how to develop the negatives and print them in the darkroom.

Before the workshops, he says, the children living here rarely mixed. Now they laugh and play together.

At the beginning of each programme – which is flexible, but often lasts around 8 weeks – there is some judgement between the Turkish and Syrian children, but by the second or third week, “local people start respecting the Syrians; they start saying their names and not just calling them ‘Syrians,’” he says.

Aysenyr, an 11-year-old Turkish girl from Mardin, says she’s made new friends while on the programme. “A lot of them are Syrian – Maria, Bashra, Suha, Huda. After we came to the workshop we are still friends, especially the girls. We are always playing together,” she says, while taking a photo of her friend Rojbin, 10.

These friendships seem especially important right now, with the rise of anti-Syrian racism in the lead-up to the recent elections, coupled with the threats of deportation back to Syria from politicians.

In a nearby school in Midyat, two Syrian sisters, Delal, 9, and Gufran, 12, take photos during a workshop. The family fled their home in Aleppo, Syria, eight years ago, settling in Gaziantep, south-central Turkey. Then the twin earthquakes struck in February, destroying their home and displacing them a second time. They arrived in Midyat shortly after.

Both of the girls wear matching strawberry earrings, their dark hair tied back in ponytails. They are shy at first but gradually come out of their shell as the workshop progresses, with Serbest gently encouraging them during games and when taking photos. The girls are yet to find a school in Midyat, so these workshops are their only way of socialising with other children.

“This workshop has made me feel comfortable here in Midyat,” says Gufran. “Before I didn’t know how to use the camera and now I know how to take photos. I love this workshop, I learnt a lot of new things here.”

Delal adds, “I’ve made lots of friends from Turkey, I play with them a lot and see them outside of the workshop. It’s helped me to feel more at home. I learnt how to empathise with other people. I want to carry on with photography – I want to capture everything I see.”

Not only is Serbest helping children in Mardin province who have been displaced by the devastating earthquakes, but he has also started travelling to earthquake-affected areas to deliver workshops to children there, such as Adiyaman and Kahramanmaras — two cities that saw some of the worst destruction.

“It was a disaster in Adiyaman — people are still in denial, they are still living in containers. Most of the children don’t go to school, their mental health is bad,” he says. “But, at the end of the workshop the children were smiling, they were more relaxed and started talking more about their emotions.”

“When they see the photos show up after being in the chemicals they are so surprised – for them, it’s like magic, they’re like ‘oh my god, is it magic? How did you do this?’”

The workshops are helping them to express themselves – and enabling them to capture memories, albeit painful ones. Hasan, 12, one of the children living in Kahramanmaras took a photo of his collapsed home, which is now a pile of rubble. He told Serbest: “I captured this photo because my grandfather was inside the house and he passed away.”

Serbest plans to go back there once he can raise enough money to buy materials through a new fundraiser. He travels there in a second-hand caravan, which he uses as a mobile darkroom and photo lab.

Normally he takes the caravan to reach remote rural villages around Mardin, after realising that some families weren’t sending their children to the workshops – particularly girls – because of the cost of transportation into Mardin.

His goal is to train the children to become teachers so they can pass on their knowledge to their own communities and expand the workshops across Turkey and the Middle East.

The Sirkhane Darkroom has already had several exhibitions of their work and will have one in Ithaque, an exhibition space in Paris, in October. They have also produced a photo book — I Saw The Air Fly, and are now selling children’s prints online at the Photobook Café.

At the end of the programme, Serbest takes the children to the darkroom and shows them how to develop and print their photos.

Their inquisitive faces are illuminated by light as they gaze at their negatives and become awestruck when they see their photos start to appear on paper. “When they see the photos show up after being in the chemicals they are so surprised – for them, it’s like magic, they’re like ‘oh my god, is it magic? How did you do this?’” he says, laughing.

Serbest, whose name means freedom in Kurdish, is giving these vulnerable children the freedom to explore their curiosity, be creative and have fun in a place where sometimes children are forced to grow up quickly — child labour and child marriage are common here, he says. The workshops are a chance for them to just enjoy being children.

“I’m trying to tell them, in photography, there are no bad photos, there are no rules, just be yourself. I’m trying to let them feel confident and have a safe space to believe in themselves.”

Jessie Williams is a freelance journalist, editor, and writer based in London. Her interest lies in global current affairs, humanitarian issues, women's rights, migration, culture, and politics - with the aim of exploring the human stories behind the headlines.

Follow her on Twitter: @JessieWill5