Dreams of Flying: Luke Skywalker Dreams of Flying: The Astronauts Dreams of Flying: Superman Dreams of Flying: The Rockets Dreams of Flying: The Pirates Dreams of Flying: Peter Pan Dreams of Flying: King Kong Dreams of Flying: The Ghostbusters Dreams of Flying: The Gardener Dreams of Flying: The Dog Rider Dreams of Flying: The Butterflies Dreams of Flying: Tarzan and Jan Gun Game Game Boys and Girls Designer Car Ball Game Acoustic Camera How to Disappear Wall Game

Growing up, kids are taught to pose and smile when they're in front of a camera. We want them to look cute. Problem is, kids aren't always cute. They can also be a real pain in the ass.

Photographer Jan von Holleben knows that and avoids this photographic trap by letting his young subjects be their loud, creative and sometimes obnoxious selves.

The typical kid photo caters to a "certain kind of people who romanticize childhood and who want to have it in a safe bubble," says von Holleben, who is based in Berlin, Germany. "Personally I find it limiting because childhood is much more complicated."

Von Holleben's most well-known work is called Dreams of Flying (above) and features a group of kids from his old neighborhood in Sasbach, Germany. The kids play out make-believe scenarios while lying on the ground while von Holleben photographs them from a ladder, car rooftop or second story window. The top-down perspective allows the kids to free themselves from gravity and pretend like they're climbing the empire state building, flying through space or swinging through the jungle like Tarzan.

When he started the project, von Holleben had been studying 19th-century photography and was disappointed with the way children back then – as they still are today – were often turned into caricatures of themselves. He wondered what would happen if kids had the chance to represent their own interests and control how they were photographed.

"I decided I would bring the photographic [technical] knowledge and they would bring the childhood knowledge," he says.

Before each shoot von Holleben says he had a pitch meeting with the kids. After an idea was agreed upon, kids were then assigned to help create the scene, build the props and deal with the styling. Von Holleben always took the picture and made the initial edit but wouldn't settle on a final image until he had the kids' approval.

"I wanted the kids themselves to take part. I wanted their feedback and I wanted them as collaborators," he says.

Started in 2002, the project took off after it featured on a series of blogs in 2003. The images spread and before he knew it von Holleben says he was being contacted by magazines and advertising firms that liked his approach. For the next five years he continued to work on the flying project but has also created a number of other series that build on his style.

Dreams of Flying is Photoshop-free and to this day von Holleben says he keeps all his work completely analog. He remembers his kid subjects figuring out ways to make fish from socks and says it inspired him to find creative ways to get around digital editing.

That's been a continuing challenge because after becoming popular, he's received a number of commissions that have asked him to create scenes that might usually be done by an illustrator. His most recent project, for example, is a children's book called Does Everybody Get Puberty? It's a response to a survey that allowed kids to ask all the questions they had about physical development as well as about related subjects like love and intimacy.

What's pubic hair for?

Some of the questions he took on with his photographs included: What do I have to eat for my breasts to grow? What can I do if a girl loves me but I don't love her back? And his favorite: Do babies fart in the womb?

The photos he came up with for the book were paired with text as a way to round out the explanation, but he always tried to devise a unique way to use visuals as an entry point.

"[My assistants and I] are doing jobs that no other photographer would do because they are a hybrid between photography and illustration," he says. "We've gotten good at resolving topics that are quite abstract."

Von Holleben believes that one of the reasons his work has resonated with a lot of different audiences is because he's always prioritized the notion of fun. He's fascinated with the theory of Homo Ludens, which is based on a book of the same title written by the Dutch cultural theorist Johan Huizinga. It argues broadly that play is a central element of society and culture.

Even when he's working on a project with adults, which now happens quite a bit, he says he likes to have them try and evoke the same sense of playfulness that fills the pictures in Dreams of Flying.

"Adults can learn a lot from kids and they can learn from being playful," he says.