At this very moment, roaming the streets with camera in hand and a knack for highlighting micro fashion, Brandon Stanton, Humans of New York, is at work. As a person in 2015, it is pretty hard to not know who HONY is. The flow of photos and the stories behind every portrait is enticing. Platformed on Facebook, tears will spring to your eyes or giggles will erupt from your throat while browsing through his content.
This photography revolution inspired a lot of smaller branches of what Humans of New York aims to do: shed light on people you see at the corner of Fifth and at the local coffee shop. Everyone has a story.
Meet Saanya Ali. A rising sophomore at New York University, she created a photography page, One A Day.
"I have always loved photography and more specifically the intricacies and stories told in a human face. I have never really been a shy person, but to approach a stranger and ask them to take a picture of their face is somewhat an awkward interaction, so I struggled with that for a while," Ali said.
Ali not only records what she digests as a New Yorker, but as a world traveler. Having roots in Pakistan and India, she has ventured through impoverished areas, asking, "Aap ki photo lesaktihu?" to across the world, seamlessly strolling through the metropolitan canvas that is D.C.
"One person in D.C. asked me what it was called and One A Day was the first thing I could think of," Ali said. "Like the multivitamin that you have to take every day."
Living in New York, this NYU student a.k.a. HONY 2.0, has an abundance of subjects. Beyond believing that everyone has a story to tell, Ali reflects on how interesting people generally look in New York, making it easy to get lost in the aesthetic of the cobblestone streets, tattoos and body piercings.
"It's fun to take pictures of people with ten piercings in their face or be in Washington Square Park and see the same person two weeks in a row with a different color in their hair," Ali said.
Humans of New York has transpired into something much bigger than just a Facebook page. Publishing books to generally creating a community within the vast city, HONY has made strides towards expanding into a brand, a business. Ali, on the other hand, views her project as a little bit different.
"I don’t want for something that I am so passionate about to ever become something that I do because I have to," Ali said. "It’s always something that I seek and look forward to and do on my own time, which I enjoy."
Capturing the grittiness of the city alongside the dazzling embellishments, Ali considers herself an onlooker with a camera lens. Her project, alongside the bigger names like Humans of New York, brings to light the jigsaw appearance of New York residents.
"I have never really been one to fit in, but that's what I like about living here. No one really fits in," Ali said. "This is where everyone that doesn’t really fit in comes…and those are the people that make the most interesting subjects and I love it."
New York City is a special place. Starving artists to broke college students to editor-in-chiefs, the city thrives on individual stories. Every person has a story and each small tale fits into an overarching one. It's what you see as the subway rolls through the Herald Square station. It's what you see underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. It's what you see behind the Empire State Building, or even above it. It's New York. And people like Ali help break down the beautiful skyline that we all love into those smaller, just as important, fragments--everyone has a story.
