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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 cell darkroom from city to city and handing out autofocus cameras and movie to the native youngsters to doc their lives. In 2021, Salih revealed a guide of his college students’ pictures. Final 12 months, he was named one among GQ’s “Males of the 12 months”. And this summer time, Salih launched his personal organisation, Fotohane Darkroom with the Turkish photographer Amar Kılıç—persevering with to work in southwestern Turkey to be able to “carry hope and wonder into the lives of youngsters affected by battle and conflict”.
Like Salih himself, a lot of his younger college students are refugees—a number of the hundreds of thousands who’ve fled Syria for Turkey ever because the 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 carry collectively youngsters of various ages and from a wide range of backgrounds. The workshops begin with classes on composition and pictures as a way of documenting social points, then the children 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 all the time making an attempt to vary the programme and technique of the workshops,” Salih says. “We’re additionally studying from the kids. 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 precise 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 essential, 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 children’ households to get to know one another as properly.
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 footage the scholars create—of their buddies, households, pets and environment. Maybe surprisingly, given their proximity to conflict, the pictures are sometimes joyful. Simply youngsters being youngsters.
Fotohane Darkroom is all the time 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].
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