Portraits of Kids Around the World Posing with Their Favorite Toys

This portrait is of a little boy named Lucas who lives in Sydney, Australia. Like many children around the world, Lucas enjoys playing with toys, particularly his set of miniature trains and wooden railroad tracks.

Like many photographers around the world, Gabriele Galimberti enjoys traveling. During an 18 month span of travels, Galimberti visited and photographed children in a long list of countries around the world with each child posing with his or her favorite toys. Lucas was one of the kids Galimberti visited for his project, which is titled “Toy Stories.”

For each of the images, Galimberti played with the children and their toys for a short time, helped them arrange the toys neatly on the ground, and then had the kids post for a portrait. Through the many portrait sessions, Galimberti discovered that children around the world have similarities and differences. While all enjoy playing and having fun, the economic status of the children apparently has a big influence on the children’s personalities.

The wealthiest children were more possessive of their belongings, refusing to let Galimberti touch the toys at first. Building rapport with those kids took longer. The poorer children were much more receptive to Galimberti and were more generous with their fewer belongings. In the poorest countries, children often had very few toys, and therefore spent most of their time outdoors with friends.

Galimberti’s portraits are very revealing of the children’s worlds — their personalities, economic statuses, families, interests, personalities, and countries:

You can find the entire set of Toy Stories photographs over on Galimberti’s website.

Toy Stories by Gabriele Galimberti (via American Photo)

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Image credits: Photographs by Gabriele Galimberti and used with permission