Brandon Stanton, The creator of Humans of New York Blog & Facebook page, Photo: GettyImages/ Huffington Post
With more than 8.5 million likes (by Aug 02, 2014), the Humans of New York is one of the most interesting pages on Facebook right now. The man behind this beautiful street photography page is Brandon Stanton. He not only takes photographs of strangers on the New York streets, but also gets pretty good stories and quotes from them. The magnificent stories, quotes and the captions always glorify the photographs. If you are not already following the Facebook page, go follow it.
Brandon started his Humans of New York Tumblr blog in the summer of 2010 after losing his trading job at the Chicago Board of Trade where he worked for 3 years. He studied History at the University of Georgia. During his senior year of college he bet $3000 on Barak Obama to win the presidency. He managed the betting money from a student loan. One of his friends heard about this and got him the job in trading business. Losing the job turned out quite alright for him at the end of the day.
Here is an interesting video on Brandon and the Humans of New York:
In a Huffington Post article he explained why his photographs and stories are so attractive:
A lot of times I ask these people very personal questions, and they’ll answer. They’ll tell me everything because a lot of times I’m the only one who’s ever asked. I can just tell when I talk to them– eight million people in this city, and nobody’s ever asked about their life.
The book Humans of New York, inspired by the blog, became the no.1 New York Times Bestseller on the week of November 3, 2013.
Sources:
1. Humans of New York
2. Huffington Post