Brandon Stanton is a 32 year old photographer who is famous for his blog and Facebook page titled Humans of New York.
After majoring in history at the University of Georgia Brandon took out a loan for $3000 and bet on Barack Obama winning in his first election. After hearing this, a friend of his got him job trading stocks in Chicago, which he did for 3 years. After a huge loss Brandon lost his job and decided to move to New York to take portraits of strangers on the street. What started as a goal of taking 10,000 portraits of New Yorkers broken down by neighborhood turned into a way of getting to know the people of New York. Brandon started collecting quotes and short stories from the people he met on the street, and this collection is most notable, and has come to be known as the Humans of New York.
With over 17 million likes on Facebook, Brandon has created an empire that brings spontaneity and interest into the lives of individuals across the world. What is so interesting about his work is that it is seemingly just average photos of average people on the streets. The subject is whoever Brandon is taking the photo of, the method is a close up photo or side photo, and the style has become unique in that there is nothing special about it whatsoever. What is so unique about Brandon’s work is the accompanying quotes and short stories about the subjects of the photos. Although many would be quick to say that the photos themselves should tell the story, Brandon’s work aims to show that there is more to a person and to art than what is simply on the outside. I admire that Brandon does not edit his photos and his only curation goes into choosing quotes and stories to share about his subjects.
http://www.humansofnewyork.com/about
Brandon’s subject matter has shifted over the years – what started as solely Humans of New York has grown into humans of the world. When I started following HONY he was posting photos solely of average people in New York, with the occasional famous person or politician. However as of late, HONY has grown into so much more. Brandon has started traveling to areas of the world that many dare not to, and he has photographed and shown the stories of individuals whose lives shift dramatically from our own. His recent work showcases Syria, prisoners in the US, and India, all through photographs and short stories and quotes.
Critics of HONY exist due to his extreme popularity and honest realism. One quote from an open letter posted about Brandon Stanton, states that:
“One of the most glaring threats that HONY makes to humanity lies in its pretension of representing all of its diversity through the lens of a single individual. While claiming to define the population of New York, it presents a whitewashed image of an earnest, vibrant city that takes place predominantly in Manhattan, during the day. The individuals featured are only those Stanton feels comfortable approaching, those he deems interesting enough to photograph, who do not take offense to an intrusive white man’s request to commodify their images.”
Another claims that:
“In the world of Humans of New York, however, humans are actually caricatures. The people Stanton photographs are reduced to whatever decontextualized sentence or three he chooses to use along with their photo. And so the nattily dressed Klein, cigar in hand, lectures us about how we should all follow our dreams, while the woman whose photo was posted near his tells us that she wants things at work, where she’s under the boss’s thumb, done “my way.” But both photographs and “stories,” as Stanton calls them, even if they are a mere sentence, exist to fulfill stereotypes; the evidently rich fellow gets to brag about his achievements, the nonwhite woman gets to complain about her lot in life.”
Most of the critics of Brandon Stanton ascertain that he portrays a blurred or dramatized version of the average New Yorker, or that he chooses to solely focus on subjects he believes will be interesting or have a story to share. I disagree, and believe that it is clear through Brandon’s recent work in the prisons of New York, Syria, and India that he chooses to leave the comfort of New York in order to show the real lives and stories of individuals across the globe. I also believe that although he holds the power to choose the quotes and stories of those he interviews, he has a wide range of uplifting and positive along with realistic and negative stories that are based solely on the individual, and not on the number of “likes” that Brandon believes he will receive.
An acclaim of Stanton states this positive perspective well:
“For all its critiques, a project like HONY at least gives us a chance to see how minority cultures exist and thrive within the collective American experience. And it brings social awareness all the more closer to recognizing and eventually dismantling the structures of institutional racism that have held power for so long. The students of Mott Hall Bridges Academy have been given a chance through HONY to demonstrate why they are as inspiring and motivated as any other community in New York and beyond.
By generating and contributing to constructive and revolutionary movements (even if on the tiniest scale), we exhibit faith in the best each of us have to offer, and a collective power in achieving viable social change.”
In my own work, traces of Brandon Stanton’s style shines through.
From My Perspective 