Brandon Stanton Quotes

'Humans of New York' did not result from a flash on inspiration. It grew from five years of experimenting, tinkering, and messing up.
'Humans of New York' wasn't the result of a fully finished idea that I thought of and then executed; it was an evolution. There were hundreds of tiny evolutions that came from me loving photography.
At some point during my travels, I had a slight change of focus which would end up defining the rest of my career. I began taking pictures of people. In addition to all the buildings, street signs and fire hydrants, I started photographing some of the interesting humans that passed by me on the street.
Each time I arrived in a new city, I'd get lost in the streets and photograph everything that looked interesting, taking nearly a thousand photographs every day. After each day of shooting, I'd select 30 or 40 of my favorite photographs and post them on Facebook. I named the albums after my first impression of each city.
I am a huge fan of biographies. What I'm always looking for is a story. I want a story I have never heard from anyone else.
I am interviewing people with a spirit of genuine interest and compassion, and therefore, the general tone of the site is one of genuine interest and compassion. The moment that culture changes, 'Humans of New York' is no longer viable.
I don't want to interview people for the purpose of developing a world view and pushing that on people.
I never know what kind of people I'll meet just by stopping to take a photo.
I struck upon this kind of crazy idea that I was going to go to New York and stop 10,000 people on the streets and take their portrait and create kind of a photographic census of the city.
I think that even though some of the things on 'Humans of New York' are kind of very personal and very revealing, I think the discomfort with sharing that tends to be overwritten by the appreciation of being able to distill the experience of your life into a story and share it with other people.
In July of 2010, I lost my finance job in Chicago. Instead of updating my resume and looking for a similar job, I decided to forget about money and have a go at something I truly enjoyed. I'd purchased a semi-professional camera earlier that year and spent my free time taking photos in downtown Chicago.
Interviewing someone is a very proactive process and requires taking a lot of agency into your own hands to get past people's general normal self-preservation mode.
It's such a different spectrum of tragedies when you talk to people in developing countries.
It's the rejection that is hard. It's not the interviewing that's hard. It's not the photography that's hard. It's, you know, approaching people all day long and having a good portion of those people reject you and some of them be rude.
My interviews are very pointed. I'm an active participant; I will kindly interrupt people. But I've learned there is nothing people won't tell you if you ask in a compassionate and legitimately interested way.
The interviews have gotten much longer with 'Humans of New York.' When I was first starting, I was just photographing people. And then I went to just kind of including a quote or two. Now when I'm approaching somebody on the street, I'm spending about 30 to 45 minutes with them often.
The only things I make money on are speeches and books.
Whenever you get a large body of work like 'Humans of New York,' a natural pathway becomes to put it between two covers. I wanted this to be a very nice keepsake. A lot of work went into it, and a lot of fans are attached to it.
You know you are an artist if you appreciate beauty.

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AuthorName
Brandon Stanton
Profession
Photographer
BirthDate
01 March, 1984
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