Earlier this week, The New York Times printed an article profiling Brandon Stanton, the 30 year old photographer behind the photo blog and social media staple Humans of New York. HONY’s mission has been to share one story at a time by posting an impromptu portrait of New York’s everyday denizens along with a brief snippet of the conversation shared between the photographer and his subject. These mini-biographies are often reposted by close to 10,000 followers each. HONY’s appeal has always been that he captures the humanity and uniqueness of the countless people who call New York City their home.
Stanton is now zooming out and bringing his camera to capture the lives and thoughts of citizens from around the world. On August 6th, he began posting pictures taken in Iraq, Jordan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. These photos tell stories of love, loss, and hope in places so different from the five boroughs. This change in focus has been part of a United Nations-sponsored tour. While these photos tend to be more political than those he takes on the home front, Mr. Stanton still manages to show that whether they live in Brownstone Brooklyn or in a Syrian refugee camp, all his subjects are human.
“I go back to widening my awareness of the spectrum of human experience; The depth and the extent of the tragedy that people go through and still keep going and living and laughing has been really shocking.”
PlayCo shares Stanton’s interest in exploring the wide spectrum of the human experience in far flung corners of the globe. We’ll be following his progress as he continues to document his encounters abroad and we hope you’ll be following Humans Of New York too.
