Brandon Stanton is the founder of the blog Humans of New York (HONY), which, as the name suggests, is about the people who inhabit New York City. Stanton interviews people at random on the streets of NYC, who often share intimate details about their lives – most of the time, they are not identified by

Brandon Stanton, St. Martin’s Press

their full names. The series has proven to be exceptionally popular: In fewer than seven years, HONY has drawn nearly 18 million followers on Facebook, over 7 million on Instagram, and Stanton has 730,000 followers on Twitter. He’s published bestselling selections of those stories and has even started a video series, an example of which I plan on highlighting in another blog post.

Stanton doesn’t provide much information about himself on his website – the content is almost entirely composed of his work. Under the “About” section of the website, Stanton says: “Humans of New York began as a photography project in 2010. The initial goal was to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers on the street, and create an exhaustive catalogue of the city’s inhabitants.” He also notes that his first entries were solely photos of his subjects, but he would later add quotes to help creative a narrative. That’s pretty much he all he says about his background.

I took a shot and emailed Brandon Stanton with some questions about his work (if he somehow finds the time to reply, I will definitely make sure to update my blog post). Short of him responding, Stanton has given plenty of interviews to various outlets, especially from 2013 on as the popularity of his blog has surged.

Stanton is one of the many people who could be considered part of today’s ever-growing group of non-traditional content creators who had an idea and harnessed the power of the Internet to make it happen. According to this in-depth interview he gave to NPR a couple years ago, Stanton previously worked in finance in Chicago, but lost his job and decided he was going to move to New York and conduct a “photographic census” of the people there. So he did.

One of the many aspects I find inspiring about Stanton is that he was never a journalist by trade – he was a hobbyist photographer who had an idea he was passionate about and made it happen. I also admire, and envy, his ability to walk up to   random people on the street, strike up a conversation, and make a strong enough connection that people are willing to share their personal and often painful details about their lives. Talking to Michel Martin for NPR’s All Things Considered show, Stanton

“We met six months ago at a dance night. His wife passed away three years ago. I’d been married for thirty years and gotten divorced. It was just nice to have someone to talk to. We have so much in common. My ex-husband only wanted to stay home and watch TV. But we do all sorts of things together: walk around the city, go to museums, travel.”
“Have sex.”
“Hush.”
“What? We’re still young.”
Brandon Stanton/Humans of New York

admits that approaching strangers and getting comfortable handling rejection are the most difficult parts of producing HONY. “I was terrified at first,” he tells Martin. “But over time, you know, I realized it’s not really about what you say when you approach a stranger, it’s all about the energy that you’re giving off.” He also gives good advice for choosing person-on-the-street interview subjects (look for someone sitting on a bench who doesn’t appear to be in a hurry) and a nice perspective on why people are willing to open up to him (“I think that if you ask with a genuine interest and a genuine curiosity and a level of compassion, there’s very little that someone won’t share with you.”).

Since beginning the blog in 2010, Stanton has expanded beyond NYC and has gone to other parts of the country and parts of the world to tell people’s stories. Often, there is some sort of timeliness to the trip, or he goes to places he feels are misunderstood by Americans. Last year, Stanton headed to Rio de Janeiro before the Summer Olympics. After the 2016 presidential election, he went to Macomb County in Michigan, which went heavily to Trump. The year before that, he traveled to Iran. Most recently, Stanton was in Russia, interviewing people there as America’s relationship with the former superpower grows ever more adversarial. Sometimes he will take on more of an activist role and use a series to highlight a specific issue or raise funds for a cause. He has produced series on pediatric cancer, Syrian refugees, and prison inmates, to name a few.

Stanton’s posts don’t always feature such heavy content, however. He adds levity to the site with a periodic series called “Today in Microfashion,” which usually features a cute kid in some kind of funky or dapper outfit – no quotes needed. Sometimes the post will be a brief humorous anecdote about what happened during someone’s day . No matter what the post is about, Stanton has an uncanny ability to make his subject’s personality shine through his photo selections.

What I like most about Stanton and his work, and likely the reason why so many other people gravitate toward his blog as well, is that no matter where he is taking photos or whom he’s talking to, the subjects people discuss on HONY are often ones we can relate to at some level. Troubles at work. Falling in and out of love. Existential crises. Mourning the loss of a loved one. Stanton’s bailiwick is finding the universal truth no matter where he is in the world, thereby connecting all of us, and offering a much-needed reminder that despite cultural differences, we all have shared experiences that bind us together as human beings.