Photo series 'Toy Stories': How kids play around the world

For Pavel from Kyiv, who was five years old at the time of the taking of the photograph, there is no doubt at all: He wants to become a policeman.

Pavel loves his guns; he plays with them all day. His younger brother is constantly being arrested. Pavel handcuffs him, interrogates him and accuses him of stealing toy cars. A British policeman's helmet is a gift his mother's best friend brought him from London. "It's the best present I ever got," Pavel says, wearing it proudly.

Toys are the "most precious possessions" of children worldwide — "from Texas to India, from Malawi to China, from Iceland to Morocco to Fiji," says Italian documentary photographer Gabriele Galimberti.

Galimberti's goal, he says, is to capture the "spontaneous and natural joy that unites children despite their diverse backgrounds" — and whether a child owns many toys, few toys or perhaps none at all. "The pride in toys that a child has is moving, funny and thought-provoking," Galimberti says.

'Toy Stories' are a coincidence

The starting shot for Galimberti's "Toy Stories" series came about more or less by chance, the photographer told DW. In 2010 and 2011, he spent two years traveling to 58 countries for a long-term project on couch-surfing for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. "So basically, I traveled, slept at people's houses and reported on stories from all over the world."

A few weeks earlier, a friend had asked him to photograph her daughter Alessia, who was four years old at the time.

Alessia was sorting through her toys in her grandfather's cow-shed when the photographer arrived. He helped her and advised the girl to arrange the things according to shape and color.

This is how — without knowing it at the time — the very first "Toy Stories" photo was taken.

Galimberti liked the photo and decided to take the same kind of photo in every country during his two-year journey. No sooner said than done. And to this day, the long-term series is not finished. "It's an ongoing project," Galimberti says. His book "Toy Stories," published in November 2014, will be followed next year, 10 years later, by "Toy Stories 2," he says.

Disparities between rich and poor

The photographer gave himself rules for taking the pictures: "One rule was: Only children between the ages of three and six. Because I thought that's the age group where you're only concerned with playing. At that age, you don't have to be worrying about grades and studying," Galimberti explains.

With children from richer families, it sometimes took a little longer for trust to be fostered, for him to be allowed to play along and for the children to be happy to have their picture taken.

Sometimes these children are "a bit more possessive with what they have. In contrast, in poorer regions, such as in African countries, he usually becomes "part of the game" quickly and easily. It has been "a little easier to photograph in places where there is less." However, he does not want to generalize this observation under any circumstances, he stressed.

Order is everything

Similar to his photo series "Ameriguns," "Home pharma," "In her kitchen" and many others, Galimberti positions the objects (weapons, medicine, kitchen utensils and, in "Toy Stories", toys) very accurately and well-ordered around his protagonists. And this, despite the fact that toys in children's rooms — as not only harried parents know —  often tend to fly around chaotically.

"Maybe because I like order," reflects the photographer. "That's my signature. You see people, of course, but you also see numbers. It's a kind of infographic. It's my way of photographing people and objects and possessions."

In 99% of the cases, the children in the series enjoyed sorting their toys together with him. If that was not the case, or if the children had even cried, he would have withdrawn immediately.

Sometimes, however, it would have worked out the second time thanks to the mediation of the parents.

The type of portrait photography he chooses is his way of telling stories, the photographer emphasizes. "Because I like to interact with people. I'm not really good at photographing landscapes or things. But people I've photographed are always people I have some connection to because I spend time with them."

Photography is "one of the most vibrant and widely spoken languages on the planet because everyone speaks it," says Galimberti. This language can help shorten distances and contribute to better intercultural understanding, he adds.

Italian documentary photographer Gabriele Galimberti, born in 1977, works for international magazines and newspapers such as National Geographic, The Sunday Times, Stern, Geo, Le Monde, La Repubblica and Marie Claire. His images have been shown in exhibitions around the world. He won the World Press Photo Award in 2021 for his portrait series "The Ameriguns."

 

This article was originally written in German.