For a good part of 2012, smiling tourists surrounded Joana Toro in Times Square. Strangers hugged her. Some even gave her a few dollars. Talk about getting a big head. Actually, it was all because of her big head, an oversize Hello Kitty mask she wore while working among the costumed characters that have become familiar denizens of the Crossroads of the World.

What started out as a way to make a little extra money while studying English turned into “I Am Hello Kitty,” a photo essay about the anonymous immigrants who transform themselves each day into instantly recognizable figures of American pop culture. Most are from Latin America, said Ms. Toro, who was a photographer in her native Colombia.

“It was shocking at first to see Mickey Mouse did not speak English and was an immigrant from Mexico,” she said. “It was shocking to see the Statue of Liberty having problems with the police. It was surreal. A paradox. It spoke to me of cultural appropriation and migration.”

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Ms. Toro came to New York a few years ago and enrolled at Hunter College to learn English. She had a roommate in Queens who had made a life-size doll of President Obama, which she used in a dance performance. When she accompanied her roommate to Times Square, Ms. Toro was immediately struck by the sight of the various characters working each corner.

Unable to work at school and with her finances tight, she got the idea to put on a costume and join them. After some inquiries, Ms. Toro met Berta (Slides 6 and 9), who worked alongside her youngest son, Carlos, and his wife (Slide 7). Berta warned Ms. Toro that it was hard work, standing all day to scrounge a few dollars. She rented her a costume, going from Minnie and Mickey Mouse to Dora the Explorer. But the one she felt most comfortable with was Hello Kitty.

“The little girls liked it a lot,” Ms. Toro said. “I felt more comfortable in that than Mickey Mouse. That was ugly, and I hated the bow tie. When you’re Mickey Mouse the little boys high-five you. Hard. They slap you on the back. Hello Kitty is cute and less of a problem.”

Many of the performers come from Passaic, N.J., and include a large number of Mexican and Peruvian immigrants. They commute to Manhattan by bus and change wherever they can, often in subway stations. Working as one of them, Ms. Toro was able to get to know them better than some intrepid photographer from the outside.

“It’s a closed circle because it is informal work,” she said. “Some are undocumented and there are problems with public space, too. People do not want to show their faces.”

Under the mask she found everyone from teenagers to grandmothers and from the barely educated to former professionals. Berta put two sons through college from the 15 years she spent as a cartoon character in Times Square. A man who played Woody from “Toy Story” had been a soldier in Peru.

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“It’s more about the person than the costume,” Ms. Toro said. “People think an ignoramus is under the mask, someone who does not know to read or write so they dance for pennies. But most of the workers I found there were humble, honest and knew what they were doing.”

Like Diana. In Colombia, she had earned a degree in environmental development. Perhaps her character was fated: She dressed up as Dora the Explorer. She told Ms Toro that although she had a college education, she felt shame in being a cartoon character. But she found the work liberating.

“I can hug total strangers,” she told Ms. Toro in one of the interviews she has conducted with the street performers. “I would never do that without a mask. I’m 29, but I feel 5 years old.”

A very recognizable 5-year-old.

“As Dora, I am famous,” Diana said. “If I was just working another job off the books, like the kind usually offered to recently arrived immigrants, I would not be famous. I’d just be one more immigrant.”

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