Friday, February 21, 2014

“Humans of New York” – The story behind all those stories

We live by telling stories. They are what makes life interesting, they are what show how uniquely different each one of us is but how intrinsically the same we are at the same time. Brandon Stanton, the creator of “Humans of New York” (“HONY”) was insightful and motivated enough to collect these stories that we all carry around with us and has, as a result, developed one of the most beautiful and creative photo-blogs ever.



29-year-old Brandon Stanton grew up in Atlanta and attended the University of Georgia and later went to New York after a short spell as a bond trader in Chicago. As a self-taught photographer, he travelled around New York City in 2010 and walked through the streets everyday taking portraits of complete strangers, originally just posting them on his Facebook profile. Today, he has collected over 6000 pictures of people he has met in the city.



He initially aimed to collect photographs with captions only in his first year of starting the blog but after starting to converse with his subjects; he began to include quotes with the photos that he posted. Stanton travels daily from his home in Brooklyn to shoot for about 4 hours before posting the images on his blog later. Today, “Humans of New York” has developed an incredible following on social media and has over 3,2 million followers on Facebook just waiting for him to upload more images.



The blog has become so popular and successful that a “Humans of New York” book was compiled in October 2013 and from the inspiration of “HONY”, hundreds of spinoff blogs have been created around the world.




When Stanton started “HONY”, he just thought it would be a really cool idea to create an extensive database of the people walking through the streets of New York. But today it has turned into much more. The blog has become a work of art that has managed to capture the inexhaustible beauty of people and the stories they carry around. He has also written about 50 short stories inspired by the people he has met along this journey. “Humans of New York” started with a simple but inspired idea that has grown, and is still growing, into a collection of something great and spectacular.


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