Sweet Nothings: Schoolgirls from the Borderlands of Eastern Anatolia, Vanessa Winship's photography

During my time in Turkey, I had grown familiar with many aspects of life that were alien to my own life in England: the everpresent military in every town and on every hill, the vast open stretches of dusty roads on the high plateaux.
One enduring image that had always struck me wherever I travelled was the schoolgirls in their blue dresses, the same in every town, city, or village. These dresses, with their lace collars and sweet messages embroidered on the bodices, were the symbol of the Turkish state, but the girls who wore them were simply little girls.
In the borderlands of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Armenia, a region euphemistically called the “emergency area” because of a long, low-level guerrilla war, in which many thousands have lost their lives, the dresses were still the same.
The land is harsh and unforgiving. Life is difficult here, and the life for the small girls who inhabit it is as harsh as for anyone. Until very recently, many girls in these remote parts never stepped into a school playground.
Attitudes about sending girls to school were a combination of traditional values, in which girls are expected to stay at home, and a deep suspicion of anything that represented the state. Increasingly conscious of this situation, the Turkish government launched a campaign to get more girls into schools.

Slowly the numbers of girls enrolling rose.
I wanted to make a series of portraits of these girls on the borderlands. Knowing their status, I wanted to give a small space for them to have a small moment of importance in front of a camera.
I decided to use this slower, more formal way of making pictures to create this space. Every frame was made at the same distance to ensure an equality. The symbol of the uniform, the distance in repetition, and the austerity of the landscape would represent one thing, but I also hoped more than anything, in the expressions of the girls’ faces, to draw attention to the idea of these young girls poised at the moment “just before”: the moment where possibility lies, a time where the presentation of self teeters into consciousness.
I asked the group of girls to come forward with their chosen friends or with their sisters. Occasionally, they came forward alone. The girls were a mix of emotions, this small moment of theatre in front of them. They were excited, curious, and a little nervous, all at the same time.
Many things touched me during the making of these images: the gravity in their demeanour, their fragility, their simplicity, their grace, their closeness to one another, but most of all I was struck by their complete lack of posturing.