It all started with a photo of Alessia, a 5-year-old Italian girl, the daughter of a friend of photographer Gabriele Galimberti.
The photographer was wrapping up a feature on couchsurfing for D La Repubblica magazine, a project that took him more than two years and brought him to 58 countries. As well as photographing his hosts, he photographed children he came across nearby. That picture of Alessia with her toys was enough to make him want to find more children around the world.
The result was Toy Stories, a series that later became a book: more than 50 children posing with their treasures, among them toy cars, stuffed animals, stackable tiles, and pirate or princess costumes. One of the stories he remembers most is that of Maudy, a girl from Zambia photographed with several pairs of sunglasses, in a village without clean drinking water, electricity, or toy shops.
Galimberti noticed something curious: in rich countries, children were more possessive and took longer to let him play with them. In places where there were only two or three toys, by contrast, the connection was immediate. According to him, at that age, everyone is pretty much alike: they just want to play.
