Sofie Knijff by Stephanie

Journalist, Mali

Actress, South Africa

Businessman, India

Engineer and Architect, India

Policeman, India

Singer, South Africa

Harry Potter, India

Belgian-born photographer Sofie Knijff has spent the last three years traveling the world making portraits of children and asking them one question: what do you want to be when you grow up? With limitless imagination the children answer, dressing up as their future selves in a series she calls Translations. By using similar backdrops for each child, Knijff strips them of their current surroundings in order to focus more intimately on their “dream characters.”

I found this series to be so inspiring, the fact that the children have used their imagination to become these dreams and how they imagine those professions to look like, gives me hope. Most of the countries that Knijiff visited are saturated with poverty and yet in all the glum there's light and hope and HUGE dreams that come out of it, that there is no possible way (in my head) that makes me believe these kids can't become what they dream of - even the Harry Potter kid. The soft lighting handles the subjects and the dream so delicately throughout the series. The expressions on the kids faces are of certainty that they already are what they say they want to be! Very enlightening and inspiring.