The italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti shares a beautiful essay on the internet, showing that kids from all over the planet love the same things. Paging through his thought provoking photos and words and introducing them to our friends and visitors on this blog was beyond question.
Though the toys of the children are reflective of their material prosperity and the parent´s economis status each child is born to. The toys tell much more about those who bought them than they can tell about the children who cherish them as their possesion.
All they want to do is playing.
The fact, that it is finally essential for children to play, should be a lesson, what we as adults all over the world already should have learned.
We have to give our the children the time and space they need instead of picking them up after school and drive them to organized freetime activities. Children have so much creativity that playing is not that much a question of material things (kids love stuffed animals, toy cars and dolls, and electronic games as well, though). Playing is a matter of internal and external conditions and we should work harder to encourage children to devolop creativity and self-determined estivated time. Children do not suffer the lack of perfect produced industrial toys since they their imagination is strong enough to play with a rag doll instead of a "Barbie", to imagine a pebble stone becoming a racing car, or to go in rags and playing to be a most beautifully dressed princess. One more time children teach us: less can be more...
Before the shooting while they arraged the toys, G. Galimberti did note, that it seems to differ from county to country how the children play. Children in richer countries are more possesive with their toys and did not allow him spontanously to play with their toys. The children from poorer countries were found easier to interact and to share their possesions.
Page through a few of our favorites from the series after the jump, and make sure to head over to Gabriele Galimberti’s website to see and read more.
Abel - Nopaltepec, Mexico
"Abel, the third of five children, was born and raised in the small town of Nopaltepec, about an hour southeast of Mexico City. In this photo he’s posing with all of his games. He loves to race with his toy cars, and sometimes plays with them with his younger sister."
Credit: Gabriele Galimberti
Bethsaida - Port au Prince, Haiti
"Bethsaida was born in Port-au-Prince where she has always lived in a house with her family since, almost 2 years ago, a big earthquake distroyed it. Her parents are both deaf and dumb but fortunately she’s not. Now they live in a camp site out of the city. The camp was built from an american NGO which works with deaf and dumbs, so in the camps almost 90% of the people can’t hear and talk. All the toys that Bethsaida has are donated from the NGO. She wants to be a hairdresser and loves combing her doll to practice, but unfortunately her brother has cut off half of the hair of the doll."
Credit: Gabriele Galimberti
Li Yi Chen - Shenyang, China
"Li Yi was born in Shenyang, a big city in the north part of China. He lives with his parents and his grandmother in a small appartment in the south suburb of the city. His favourite toys are the guns. He loves to put little boxes above the table and then i likes to shoot at them rubbers bullets with the gun. He also love to play with the YoYo because his favourite character of cartoon uses the YoYo like a weapon.
Credit: Gabriele Galimberti
Alessia - Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy
"Alessia was born and raised in the country, her family owns one of the largest farms in the city. She loves to play with animals and helping her grandfather with the work of the farm. With her small tools she brings food to the many Chianina cows."
Credit: Gabriele Galimberti
Botlhe - Maun, Botswana
"Botlhe has a lot of friends, and all of them live really close by to the small house where she lives with her family in a residential complex. In the complex, there is one toilet for every four families. Botlhe has only one toy, the monkey, but she almost never plays with it because she prefers to go out with friends and play with them."
Credit: Gabriele Galimberti
"Naya - Managua, Nicaragua
has few small cook tools but she never gets bored to play with them. She uses mud and grass from the garden to pretend to cook some cakes for her older sister. She says that in the future she will manage a restaurant and she’s sure that turists will love it!"
Credit: Gabriele Galimberti
Allenah - El Nido, Philippines
"Allenah Lajallab was born and raised in El Nido, a small town north of Palawan in the Philippines. In El Nido there weren’t hospitals and she was born at home. She has a lot of stuffed animals, and her favorite is the orange one because she loves the color. She doesn’t like the white stuffed animal as much, because it gets dirty too easily."
Credit: Gabriele Galimberti
Chiwa - Mchinji, Malawi
"Chiwa lives in a small hut with her mother, father and sister. They
don’t have electricity and running water. Chiwa used to help her mother
to carry water at home from the river. In the village there are other 50
children (more or less) and they always plays all together outside.
Chiwa has just 3 toys that some volonteers of an NGO gave to her when
she was born. Her favourite is the dinosaurus because she says that he
can protect her from the dangerous animals."
Credit: Gabriele Galimbert
Orly - Brownsville, Texas
Orly was born in Browsville from a Mexican mother and American father.He
has never been in Mexico, 2 miles south of his house and his mother
hopes that he will never go there because, she says, it is a dangerous
place.He loves dinosaurs. He says that those that fly over his bed
protect him from ghosts and from the mexican people that might kidnap
him.
Credit: Gabriele Galimbert
Arafa & Aisha - Bububu, Zanzibar
Arafa and Aisha are twins. They sleep in the same bed, have the same clothes, go to school together and share the same toys. They live in a two-room house in which both of the rooms are bedrooms, and the kitchen and restroom are outside. The big photo above the closet is a portrait of the formal president of Zanzibar.
Photo Credit: Gabriele Galimberti
Cun Zi Yi - Chongqing, China
"Cun Zi Yi just turned 3, and received a lot of gifts for her birthday. She plays with everything and can’t choose her favorite toy. Her parents say that she’s really good at painting, and will be an artist when she grows up."
Credit: Gabriele Galimberti
Pavel - Kiev, Ukraine
"Pavel doesn’t have any doubts: he wants to be a police man. He loves guns and plays with them all the time. His younger brother is always under “Pavel’s arrest.” Pavel handcuffs him, questions him and accuses him of stealing cars. Sometimes he lets his brother be the police man, but only when other friends come over and become the “bad people” Pavel wants to arrest!"
Credit: Gabriele Galimberti
G. Galimberti experiences show what most of us might have discovered in our own lifes: most of the people tend to become less giving the more they posess. This result is a strong task for putting love first instead of material things. ( Though Pavel doesn´t seem to grow up in poverty, I am much more worried about his mental well being than about Botlhe´s from Botswana.) Let´s take care about our children with more love, giving them much more time and patience instead of showering them with industrial produced presents.
Remember....what are your most cherished moments in your childhood?
In kindergarden and at home we arranged a toy abstinence for 3 or 4 weeks once a year. All the toys became cased and stored on the garrett. The only things at the children´s disposal were drawing paper, colored crayons, and picture books. Outside they could play in the sand box and everything the garden offers. (Did you ever experience what a great playground a puddle can be?)
The first time on "toy diet" was always hard, because creativity seems to vanish the more toys are at one´s disposal. But after some time playing with self created stuff became more and more fun. After weeks the unpacking of the old stored toys brought kind of christmas feeling every weekend when we got a parcel from the garrett.
Thank you very much for your work, Mr. Galimberti.
Your work set the ball rolling...
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