A Syrian Documentary Photographer Teaches Children to Capture Their Lives

Since 2012, in the village of Mardin, Turkey, close to the Syrian border, a community center called Her Yerde Sanat-Sirkhane has been organizing workshops in the circus arts and photography for local children affected by war. “Children have the opportunity to collaborate and form friendships with one another, beyond gender, social and cultural differences,” reads Sirhkane’s mission statement. “In doing so, they manifest peace, harmony, open mindedness and cheerfulness in their local and global communities.” Syrian documentary photographer Serbest Salih leads the photography workshops, encouraging local kids—many of them fellow refugees—to capture their surroundings, developing the black-and-white film and printing the photos themselves in a mobile darkroom. Yet the photographs the kids make are seldom as grim as the ongoing war that has surrounded them for most of their young lives; instead, they capture their friends playing outside, their families at home, and the local goats wandering the village. A new book, I Saw the Air Fly, collects more than one hundred of these images, all made and chosen by the kids themselves—with some help and guidance from Salih.

Elena Goukassian: Tell me about the Sirkhane Darkroom. How did it start, how did you get involved, and where did the idea for a mobile darkroom come from? 

Serbest Salih: I’m originally from Kobanî, a Syrian city on the Turkish border. In 2014, when ISIS attacked my city, I fled to Turkey and started working with some NGOs as a photographer. When I moved to Mardin, I started working as a volunteer with Sirkhane, a social circus group for vulnerable children and children who are affected by war. One day, me and my friend went to an area where we saw people who are Syrian, Turkish, Arab, Syrian Kurdish, Syrian Arabs—they are in the same neighborhood, but there’s never been good communication with each other, they don’t know each other. So, we got the idea to use photography as the language to let their children express themselves. After ten months, the project got support from a German NGO called Welthungerhilfe.

In 2019, we were talking about transportation issues. We take children from the area where they live to Sirkhane, which is very hard sometimes, especially for parents, because they don’t know us and they usually tell children to never trust anyone. So, I thought we could use a mobile program. We had a container belonging to Sirkhane, and I changed it into a darkroom, and every two months, I change my location. 

When COVID-19 started, I changed my program into mobile, online workshops. It was hard, because most of the children cannot access the internet, or they don’t have a smartphone. Luckily, we started face-to-face workshops again, as the situation in terms of coronavirus is getting better here in Turkey. It’s been four months since we started face-to-face workshops again. And now we are using a caravan, which we got with money from our fundraising. I turned the caravan into a darkroom, and we are traveling from village to village and doing workshops with the children.

Goukassian: How involved are the parents in these workshops? How do you make sure they trust you enough to send their kids there?

Salih: In the beginning of the workshops, we invite the families to see the stuff we are doing. They might think it’s just sending their children to spend a little bit of time outside, but we invite them to Sirkhane, and they see our communication with the children and how we take children seriously. In terms of communication with their child, they also start taking children very seriously. So, yeah. They trust us.

Goukassian: What does a typical workshop look like?

Salih: We do an orientation week first. In the beginning, most of the children are very shy, so we make a circle to let them introduce themselves. In the circle, they are all equals. I explain to them why I chose analog photography—because if you want to learn photography, you should start from zero. And after that, I show them all different types of cameras—some of them are pinhole, analog, digital cameras. After that, I show them compositional photography, and explain that compositional photography doesn’t have rules, and I add with compositional photography awareness of subjects such as child brides, child marriage, gender, and bullying. Then we go outside in the yard, shooting without film, just to practice how to use a camera, and after that, we come back and I show them pictures by the best female and male photographers, to show them that gender is not a basis for anything. After that, I give them cameras with film. I’m not telling them what to shoot; I tell them they can select whatever they want; it’s just that you have to feel it when you shoot a photo. After two or three weeks, I show them how to develop film inside the darkroom, and after that, we print all the negatives inside the darkroom. After they’ve done all these courses, I let them do it themselves. I’m just watching them after that. We scan negatives together, and we discuss their photos. 

In the beginning of the workshop, the children are very shy, but then they are participating, speaking about their life, and when we develop their film, they start speaking about their photos when they shoot them. The results are mostly the children sharing moments inside the house, outside, with their families, eating breakfast or lunch or playing with their friends. In the beginning of the project, we used to get more reactions from adults and parents, who always thought the pictures would be about sadness, because these are children who are affected by war and vulnerable children. But mostly, in the workshops we talk about happiness.

Goukassian: What kinds of cameras do you have the kids use? 

Salih: They’re very simple compact cameras. Mostly, I get second-hand cameras. Kodak, Fujifilm, Canon. Many different brands. All auto-focus. 

Goukassian: What languages do you teach in? 

Salih: Turkish, Arabic, and Kurdish, mostly. 

Goukassian: Do you teach in all three languages at once, because the kids come from different backgrounds? Or do you have, for example, a Turkish-language class and then a separate Kurdish-language class? 

Salih: My goal is to integrate the community, so I’m trying to not do any separate groups according to language. Sometimes, our common language is Turkish, sometimes it’s Kurdish, sometimes it’s Arabic. Most of the time, it’s Turkish. The main aim of this project is to integrate the children. Most of the children grew up here, in Turkey, so now they are speaking Turkish. 

Goukassian: Where are you now? Do you currently have a class? How many kids are in it?

Salih: Three weeks ago, I finished a workshop. Next week, I’m planning to start workshops in a village called Karakuyu. Five days of the week, I’m planning to do workshops every day with two groups, with eight to ten children in each group. Every day it’s two groups: one from 10 a.m., and the second group starts at 2 or 3 p.m.

Goukassian: What are your plans for the future? How can the larger photography community support your workshops?

Salih: I’ll continue doing workshops with the caravan. Right now, we are in need of photography materials, especially black-and-white film and compact cameras. We have a donation page, where people can support us or send us second-hand cameras. 

Goukassian: Have you shown the book I Saw the Air Fly to any of the kids whose pictures are featured in it? What were their reactions? 

Salih: I showed photos and the photobook to some of the children. Their reaction was amazing. They were very happy, because in the beginning, when we decided we would create a photobook, I gathered up all the children and I put the photos on the table so they could select photos for the book themselves, and when they saw the result in the photobook, they were very happy. They still don’t believe that it’s published worldwide. 

Goukassian: What about your own reaction to the book?

Salih: I see this photobook as a celebration of childhood.

I Saw the Air Fly was published by MACK in August 2021.