With water, clay and grass, Delali Ayivi creates a photographic playground for Wimbledon

In a commissioned work by the hygiene and sanitation organisation WaterAid for the Wimbledon Foundation, the talented Togolese-German photographer Delali Ayivi (nominee for Forbes 30 Under 30 and a previous It’s Nice That graduate) celebrates the role of water in play and imagination. Inspired by the idea of what possibilities are made available to us when we have time to put imagination into practice, Delali’s expressive photography series Time to Play explores the power of play as a political act, and how free, sanitised and readily accessible water is a pathway to play.

Created between Lomé and London, the project centres play as both subject and method, showing how imaginative power is used to shape young people’s futures. “I aimed to underline imagination as essential and universal. We all imagine and have dreams for our existence. It is shaped by how we learn to see ourselves beyond imposed limits,” says Delali. “If a child cannot play and live out their imagination freely, they are often left with only inherited or dictated possibilities.”

Delali explores the aesthetic and emotional elements of water in an adventurous and empathetic fashion. Using strong hues of royal blue, subdued shades of tennis court clays and almost neon green astroturf, the colour spectrum of both Wimbledon and the material space of playing are fused immaculately. The images were shot over a span of two weeks with Delali’s friends and family, children from the Wimbledon Junior Tennis Initiative and other Wimbledon Community Tennis Programmes in London. They were then exhibited along the queue for the Wimbledon Championships, which concluded yesterday.

To underline the playful nature of the images, Delali created cardboard props with tactile, textured papers, reflecting the imperfect nature of imagination. With some props taking on cosmic shapes such as swirls and stars, imagination is respected and represented with a galactic largeness. In other photographs, imagination happens in quiet solitude, or immersion inside of a chess game. “The images capture spontaneity: children rolling wooden blocks, spinning, jumping, resting,” says Delali. “Their movement is unscripted, intuitive, and honest.”