Humans of New York

by William Torres, junior feature editor

Background on Brandon Stanton’s life and the effects he has had on others

HONY(Humans of New York) was created by Brandon Stanton, a photographer who decided to embark on a mission to capture the inhabitants of New York City. This project started in 2010 after Stanton had lost his job as a bond trader. His original goal was to get 10,000 pictures of strangers that he came across for his blog, and to this day has collected about 6,000.

This small project had turned into a large photo blog on Facebook and Instagram gaining worldwide recognition. Each of the photos that Stanton takes has either advice or a personal story about the hardships that the people in the photo have faced in life.

Stanton traveled to Iran in 2013 for about two weeks to capture the environment of the people living in Iran, just as he did in New York. People in Iran were very supportive about the idea of Stanton taking these street portraits of the Iranians. Having the chance to show people around the world that they were also human, and that they were not different from anyone else, by showing the real face of the Iranian people.

Humans of New York has inspired many students from the high schools of New York to make their own pages taking pictures about the people in their school and share their stories. Schools like Townsend Harris and Francis Lewis follow in suit with the idea of getting the stories of the people out. There is usually a message in the pictures that Stanton takes; to share the hardships of others and see if people can relate. These quotes gathered by HONY gives people a chance to relate to another person’s hardships that could be faced later on, or from the past.

“I love HONY because I feel like sometimes when I feel down I can look through his pictures and feel happy, because of these uplifting stories that I read,” junior Binnah Cha said.

Events that Stanton has done in the past

On October 15, 2013 Stanton released the Humans of New York book, which featured some of the many street portraits that he took, reaching the number one position on the New York Times Best Sellers of 2013 within the first month it was released. On October 7, 2014 Stanton planned to release Little Humans of New York, a book filled with portraits of children.

“Honestly, i think it’s a great thing that Brandon Stanton is doing, it shows us how one person can do one thing that affects a whole bunch of people. Just seeing all of these people reveal some of their darkest secrets to a random stranger asking for a picture is mind blowing,” freshman Lira Kang said.

In 2014 Stanton had once again set up a charity event to help a boy named Rumi achieve his dream of being able to have a horse, by sending his family to a ranch in Colorado. The initial goal was $7,000, which was reached within 15 minutes eventually reaching up to $32,167. With the remaining $20,000 Stanton had donated the rest to New York Therapeutic Riding Center, which is an organization that helps children with disabilities to ride horses.

“I always knew that Stanton took pictures, but I never knew about the events that he has done out of school. Honestly I think its great that he does this stuff for other people in need,” junior Marcela Abanto said.

A majority of the comments on Facebook show how many people care about their past, present, or future issues and how they can relate to it. Stanton wants to portray how all humans have a way of relating to one another. When he took his trip to Iran, he succeeded in implanting the idea to the world that people should look past the common stereotypes. HONY inspires many people because of the way Stanton presents their stories.