By KATIE KLIMACEK
Staff Writer
Every day we pass people in school, on the street, and in malls, and it is easy to just push by them and be rude because we don’t know them. They are just a stranger to us, someone that we will probably never see again.
We tend to lose a sense of humanity towards those we don’t know and find it hard to image that they are people just like use too.
Brandon Stanton, is a 28 year old ex-bond trader who lives in New York City.
If you were to pass him on the street you would think that he is just another kid that came to the city to be another great photographer or something.
But if you stop for just a moment to see what he is photographing, you will find out his mission is quite the opposite. He is not taking pictures of famous landmarks or flashy models, but rather the people that call the Big Apple their home.
Stanton is the man behind the powerful blog Humans of New York. He walks the streets of NYC and takes pictures of the people that make the city so unique. He looks for people that define the area around them, people that represent their neighborhood. HONY allows you to look at the people behind the faces we pass each day.
There is that popular saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words”, Stanton is able to find a person that most of us would just walk by, and takes a picture of them that says so much.
In a time where anyone can take a picture, post it, and share it with millions, it is easy for people to see a photo of a group of friends and just scroll past it.
But Stanton is able to make people stop and see that the group of friends hasn’t seen each other since their high school graduation 25 years ago, he allows you to see past the posed image and into the person he is photographing.
By taking these pictures, Stanton has been able to make people realize that the homeless man on the side walk is not there because he is too lazy to get a job but rather because he lost everything in a fire, was injured, and is unable to work.
Or that the woman in tattered clothing playing a drum in central park is completely content with her life.
The pictures allow us to walk in someone else shoes for a moment and understand that everyone is a human, even if you have never even met them.
As you scroll through the blog, you can’t help but get a little choked up as you read the conversations and stories that these people have with Stanton.
This every changing art is something that can easily bring any one to tears. As you read the few lines posted under each picture, you can feel the emotion, whether it is happy or sad, that the person felt when they had their picture taken. This is exactly what these photos are supposed to do. These pictures are supposed to make you understand what other people go through and understand that we are all just humans.
“So much that walks by me inspires me” says Stanton. His initial plan was to take pictures and categorize them in to the different boroughs, and you would be able to see the different people from each borough. But then he realized that he could do so much more with it, celebrate those that make NYC what it is.
One day Stanton hopes that Humans of New York can become a global blog, Humans of Germany or Humans of China.
Stanton has been able to take something as simple as a picture to connect so many people with one another, beyond a language and beyond mountains and rivers that separate them. A guy changing the world one picture at a time.
To see the photos, go to humansofnewyork.com.
