The World Was Ours

Balancing documentary observation with emotional immediacy, the work celebrates the universal capacity of children to claim the world as their own, if only for a moment. Beyond its Cuban setting, the photograph becomes a timeless reflection on freedom, innocence, and those fleeting moments when happiness feels limitless.

Five children race downhill through a Havana neighborhood on chivichanas, handmade wooden carts built by Cuban children for play. Moving at full speed toward the camera, they transform an ordinary street into a place of adventure, where imagination transforms the everyday. Their expressions of exhilaration and laughter capture a fleeting moment of absolute freedom.

Titled "The World Was Ours", the photograph reflects on childhood as a place where joy exists independently of material circumstance. The handmade carts are not symbols of scarcity, but of invention, transforming the ordinary into something extraordinary through play, friendship, and boundless imagination.