The vibrant blog Humans of New York, otherwise known as HONY, started in the summer of 2010 when a young guy got laid off from his finance job and wanted to do something more with his hobby and passion of photography. This something started with HONY being a photography map where one could click on a district of New York City and see different pictures of the people who lived in that district. The photographer of all these images is Brandon Stanton, the founder of HONY. Stanton would walk around New York City, each day, and take all kinds of photos to post on his blog that night.
As the project progressed, Brandon found that there was so much more to these images of New Yorkers. These individuals being photographed had stories worth telling. Brandon decided to start collecting quotes and short stories from the people he met and photographed and include these snippets next to the different photos. Brandon says on the Humans of New York blog, “I thought it would be really cool to create an exhaustive catalogue of New York City’s inhabitants, so I set out to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers.”
As an avid viewer and reader of Humans of New York, I have seen so many photos of diverse people and have read so many unique stories of individuals. One photo and story that stood out to me was a photo of a woman under an umbrella in the rain. The story that corresponds is even better. The way Brandon tells the story is that he asked her what is one piece of advice she could give someone. The woman replies with a statement her husband had told her. “Take the love you have for me and spread it around.” This advice from an old woman should ring true in our lives in how we treat and show our love to other people and the ones we don’t know so well, or the ones we see at a distance on the street.
The thousands of photos on HONY each tell a special story in some way or another, and show us something bigger: that everyone has a story. So many people in every country, state, city and group have stories to tell and stories worth sharing and opinions to be heard. HONY is just one amazing piece of stories to this large puzzle of life and all the individuals and their stories in it. Props to Brandon Stanton for embarking on a journey to take 10,000 amazing photos that tell 10,000 unique stories in New York City, out of the endless stories that individuals throughout the world have to tell.
