![]() “They didn’t know each other, but I thought they should.” The Secret (that’s a Victoria Secret’s shopping bag) “What do you miss most about Puerto Rico?” Then she leaned in and said: ”But sex is better.” After I gave her one, she said: “Isn’t love great?” “Probably just the struggles of the community: illiteracy, early pregnancy, black-on-black violence…”Īfter I took her photo, she stuck her cheek out for a kiss. “What’s your greatest struggle right now?” “Put me on the internet! Even on The Google!” “If you could give one piece of advice, what would it be?” “These two were dominating the northern sidewalk of 14th Street at about 5.30pm (10 April).” Here is a sample of some of Stanton’s most recent work, as displayed on Facebook. “It is great, but I prefer to be focused on my work, without caring about them,” Stanton said. There are imitation projects like Humans of Paris, Humans of Beirut, Humans of Buenos Aires and Humans of Karachi on Facebook. Inspired by Stanton, other photographers are already starting to do the same kind of photographic catalogue of their cities. It will contain 400 images, stories and captions. He is also preparing a HONY book which is due to be published in October. “My perspective now is to go everywhere,” he said. He now has 20,000 Iranian followers on his blog. In December Stanton travelled to Iran to do the same thing. It can be very stressful,” he said.Įven New York is no longer big enough for the Humans project. We could think that it is easy to be my own boss, but my actual boss is my 650,000 followers, for whom I have to update pictures every day. He’s even stopped focusing on the idea of trying to reach a specific number of photos: he has bigger responsibilities. Now it is more about the phenomenon which brings people,” he said. When Stanton’s blog caught on, the nature of the idea changed. “When he begins something, he is very into it, very focused.” “We were very worried for him, but he kept going,” his friend Samuel Ward said. The first year of the project was difficult, he says, with only 3,000 online followers. A widow told him she still had a lot of love to give. He always starts with a simple, “Hi, can I take a picture of you?” This then develops into more personal questions aimed at getting to know his latest New Yorker, which include things like “What was the happiest moment of your life?”Ī few answers stick out in Stanton’s mind, among them an alcoholic homeless man who dreamt of going fishing and a young punk who said simply she wanted to be happy. His method is to walk, often for hours, in search of a striking image that he thinks will let him get through to the subject’s personality. “Mom wasn’t too happy about that decision, but so far it’s gone pretty well,” he writes.Īfter two years, Stanton has earned a big following, with nearly 650,000 Facebook fans. The fact he had no photography experience did not faze him. The 10,000 pictures idea came up after he moved to New York from Chicago where he had just lost a job trading bonds on the Chicago Board of Trade. The photographer describes himself on his website as “really passionate about things”, which is something of an understatement. “I am going on a treasure hunt,” Stanton told AFP. There is a woman in white furs, an older man in a fake tiger-skin coat, a nun, a man in wizard costume, ballerinas posing over heating vents, and a Michael Jackson lookalike busking in the subway. The results go on the 27-year-old’s vibrant blog Humans of New York, a family album for America’s biggest city, with subjects ranging from streetwise youngsters to the homeless and fashionably dressed lovers. It is New Yorkers themselves he wants to capture – 10,000 of them.Įvery day, the obsessive shutterbug goes out through Harlem, Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx to snap another New York face. NEW YORK IS famously photogenic, but photographer Brandon Stanton is not interested in the skyscrapers, bridges or famous yellow cabs.
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