Serbest Salih just wrapped up a four-month-long photography workshop in Mardin, a city in southeastern Türkiye just about twenty miles away from the Syrian border. These workshops, in which Kurdish, Turkish, and Syrian children learn the art of analog photography, are hosted by the nonprofit Fotohane Darkroom, which Salih co-founded with fellow photographer Amar Kılıç in 2024. The classes often last about six to eight weeks, but this time, Salih told me, the kids just didn’t want it to end. 

Mardin, a storied city already rich with ethnic and religious diversity, became a new home for those displaced by the Syrian civil war in the 2010s and onwards. This free program in the heart of the city creates a space for children of different backgrounds to positively interact and share responsibility as they learn how to use a camera and navigate a darkroom.

At the beginning of each workshop, the participants, usually between the ages of seven and thirteen, are given a short orientation and go on a “photo walk” together, snapping pictures of whatever piques their interest, before being sent home with their analog cameras for a few weeks.

“We thought first about teaching digital photography,” Salih told me. But whether you are a child or adult, as a beginner, if you have “low self-confidence you might delete your photos directly.” Analog photography, on the other hand, allows children to experiment freely without the fear of mistake, offering a unique glimpse into their world. 

“I cannot capture a photo from a child’s perspective, because they can, for example, capture their true moments inside of the house,” Salih says. Accordingly, shots of the young artists’ siblings at home, their friends playing soccer outside, meandering by a train track, or enjoying the last day of school make up their rich portfolios.

Once their film rolls are full, the kids go into the nonprofit’s darkroom, which stands above a few cobblestone steps in “Old Mardin,” to develop their photos—a process so many of the children describe as “magic” as they see their images emerge on paper. At Fotohane, children also have full autonomy over their creative process; they select the photos the project shares on social media or features in their exhibitions or photobooks. “We don’t want to include adult manipulation in the project,” Salih says.

And while they create striking images throughout this process—internationally recognized in exhibitions from France, India, Greece and more—Salih emphasizes that the organization’s utmost priority is the children’s well-being. He helps connect families with other organizations that support them in welfare services; through activities and discussions around topics like displacement, peer bullying, and gender equality during the camp, he helps children understand their rights, articulate the wide spectrum of their emotions, and realize their capacity for creation. Many begin the workshop painfully shy but leave with a newfound empowerment, like nine-year-old Sham. 

“We learned that we have the right to play and to feel safe, to express our thoughts, and that it doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or a girl,” wrote Barin, a twelve-year-old former Fotohane student, in her testimonial. “Every person can do anything. When I heard that, my belief in myself got bigger.” Workshop participants often learn about successful photographers that hail from their culturally rich corner of the world, men and women, before they begin shooting themselves. “Now when someone says to me I can’t do it because I’m a girl, I just smile because I know I can,” says Barin.

Salih came to Mardin from the Syrian city of Kobani after ISIS laid siege to the Kurdish-majority town in 2014. His own process of integration was relatively easy because of the common ethnolinguistic makeup of both cities—Türkiye and Syria have a long history of cultural exchange; in fact, Salih’s grandfather was the director of a train station in Aleppo and often travelled between the two countries—but he notices this is not the case for everyone. 

Though children more often experience identity-based bullying, Salih says, they can also be the bridge. When Salih hosted his first workshop in a poverty-stricken border town called Istasyon, he noticed minimal interaction between the local populations and new Syrian refugees, despite their common languages of Kurdish and Arabic. The workshop, a rare cultural opportunity in the area, slowly brought the neighbors together via their children’s work. 

Workshop participants must also reckon with the harsh realities of living in an earthquake zone, their friends returning home to Syria, and child labor—boys begin working with their fathers and girls begin helping their mothers around early adolescence, especially in the villages surrounding Mardin city. But families who see a glimpse of their children’s creative abilities often encourage them to continue.  

Still, Fotohane rejects “deficit-based” narratives—that is, only focusing on children’s losses and traumas—and instead wants children to feel empowered to represent themselves. Salih also told me that international praise has often focused on Fotohane’s work with recent migrants to the region, but “we don’t want positive discrimination between local and refugee children,” he explained. “I’m also a refugee, but we don’t want to label children. Children are children, no matter where they’re from.” 

At the same time, Salih doesn’t want to overinflate the purpose of art in combating the social issues these children encounter: ”Of course, photography is beautiful,” he says, adding that it can function as psychological support. “But it doesn’t save lives…we just want children to have a fun time, and have access to the current cultural opportunities.” He says that he’s been asked to do workshops in both Syria and Palestine, but said it felt callous and unethical to promote their organization when people are still struggling with more urgent humanitarian needs in both countries.

Salih worked with a number of NGOs and developed a travelling darkroom caravan before partnering with Kılıç to create the more permanent fixture in the community that is Fotohane Darkroom. In their first year together, they have served over 120 children, gone through more than 280 rolls of film, hosted exhibitions in six countries, and are continuing to receive growing international recognition. 

The Freiburger PhotoLab in Germany will host their Beauty Through Children’s Eyes exhibition until February 26, and Bursa Foto Fest in Türkiye will be showcasing photos from December 12 to January 12. Fotohane is also developing a showcase in Perugia, Italy.