Gabriele Galimberti is a renowned Italian photographer and the creator of the collection ‘Toy Stories’, photos of children from all over the world with their favorite things. To create this complicated collection of photographs, Gabriele traveled around the world to portray children with their most precious things: their toys, and in this way, he showed that although they have cultural differences and diverse origins, their toys unite them.
In a recent interview with the media outlet Bored Panda, Galimberti explained that he started this project by chance. “The first photo I took for this series was in Tuscany, it’s the one with the little girl and the cows in the background. She is the daughter of one of my best friends. She asked me to photograph her, so I went to her house and she was playing with the cows. I thought that situation was really nice and decided to take a picture of that moment. I asked her to pose next to her toys and with the cows in the background. Then I really loved the result and a few months later, when I had the chance to start my trip around the world, I decided to take the same kind of photo in every country I was going to visit.”
The collection of 58 photos involves children from 58 different countries around the world and, according to Galimberti, often tells the story of the town and the family just as much as that of the child involved. He said the process wasn’t always easy, and that it often took time to win over the children’s confidence. On most occasions, however, they helped the photographer set up the toys for the photo. Here’s a sample of the collection.
