I am fortunate to represent through my artist management company INSTITUTE a brilliant visionary Italian photographer called Gabriele Galimberti. Gabriele’s trademark is that he works on fun global projects photographing similar situations, highlighting the diversity between wealth and poverty, colour and creed with a striking aesthetic.

The first series that caught my attention was when he photographed Grandmothers with their favourite recipes. The series known as Delicatessen With Love. Gabriele travelled to over 50 countries photographing exotic dishes being prepared. He even sampled all of them — here is a selection of images to give you an idea.

The cool thing about this work is not only the photographs but the fact that he has noted down meticulously the ingredients and the process to produce the end dish!

More can be seen by clicking this link

This project blew me away but then he told me that he had also been photographing children all over the world with their favourite toys. When he showed me what he had, my jaw dropped and I knew that this was an incredible commercial project, that would be appreciated by clients and the public at large.

Everyone remembers their childhood toys. The fact that I can recall how most of mine tasted better than I can remember the names of my primary school teachers says everything you need to know about the universe kids inhabit. Indeed, when Galimberti hit upon the idea of photographing children from around the world with their toys, he was not expecting to uncover much we did not already know: kids love dolls and dinosaurs and trucks and cuddly monkeys, and will construct worlds around them before eventually, inevitably, disregarding them for ever. “At their age, they are pretty all much the same,” is his conclusion after 18 months working on the project. “They just want to play.”

You can learn more about the project and see all the images in the story here. Abrams Image saw the project and felt the same way as I did and immediately decided it had to be a book and I am pleased to say you can now buy a copy of the book in your local book store or on-line.

I love this project and the books is gorgeous. My two children happen to be included too — Sofia and Oscar.