Sirkhane Darkroom works with children across Syria, Turkey and Iraq to learn skills in photography

Creativity has long been perceived as a way to help people find solace and healing; a way to navigate life’s biggest challenges. This is the perspective of Serbest Salih, a photographer from Kobanî, Syria. Serbest is the founder and director of the nonprofit organisation Sirkhane Darkroom, a project that works with children across Syria, Turkey and Iraq who have witnessed violence, poverty and war. Through the project, children learn the fundamentals of photography; how to develop visual ideas; create original visions; and express themselves through the medium, later even developing their own photographs.

The inspiration for the project came to Serbest in 2012, at the start of The Syrian Civil War. Encountering many displaced people from cities across Syria in Aleppo, Serbest began getting to know individuals, carrying a camera with him and documenting people’s stories, ensuring the horrors of the war were documented. “This is when my love for people transformed into me always having a camera by my side,” Serbest says. In the years following, Serbest began formulating the idea for Sirkhane Darkroom, before it was eventually launched in 2018. And now, the project operates in the southeast of Turkey, a few kilometres from the Syrian border. Importantly, Serbest presses, the project is “non-political, non-ideological and non-religious”, founded solely with the aim of offering free creative workshops that “enable children to first of all know themselves better”.

Alongside helping children “learn how to create beauty and out of the darkness of their past and present”, Serbest tells us that the project is also one that aims to prolong childhood. “We try to prolong the childhood of those children who had to grow up very quickly due to harsh circumstances,” Serbest outlines. “We work in the areas where it is difficult to be a child and to remain a child.” In tandem with building a creative, fun and expressive place for children to meet other children their own age and with similar experiences, the project also applies methods outside of the photographic practice, taking children and their problems seriously. “Our organisation structure applies child safeguarding policies,” Sebest says, “we also facilitate access to specialised protection and other welfare services for Syrians and non-Syrian refugees in Turkey.”

Unlike many nonprofit projects, the programme takes place over an expansive time period; eight weeks to be exact. Additionally, Serbest has ensured that this period is flexible to each child’s personal circumstances, allowing for their own timeline of completion, staying with the children and ensuring each has an enriching experience. Travelling with the aim of reaching as many villages as possible, the mobile darkroom has seen numerous locales. When arriving, Serbest explains that the team meet with the “responsibles” of the village, and once the go-ahead has been given, put on a show to pique the interest of local children. The project begins after speaking with the children’s guardian or parents, and gaining both consent for the use of photos to promote the project.

The first week involves getting the children both excited and invested. Games are played and the children are encouraged to create their own rules and goals for the project, offering both direction and personal agency. They’re also given a summary of the project and process, and why photography is a powerful medium of expression. In week two, the children are shown a variety of cameras, being taught their main details and how to use them, and that “there's no such thing as bad photos or rules in photography”. Then, in week three the students learn about local and international photo artists, and the art of composition.

In the interim weeks the children are given a period of time to complete a 36 exposure roll; Serbest shows them how to develop them in the mobile darkroom, allowing them to get involved as a group, and also showing them how to make their own pinhole camera and photogram. Before, in week eight, focus groups discussing the photos take place, with the children selecting the photos they want exhibited or included in photobooks, adding their own personal captions.