We spoke to Brandon Stanton, the man behind Humans of New York
‘I’m very good at knowing when something is sincere and knowing when something is real’
Recently at Bucknell University, Brandon Stanton, the man behind Humans of New York, visited as a part of the Student Lectureship Committee’s series to speak of his HONY successes.
I had the honor of interviewing Stanton for Bucknell’s college radio station. When I met him, he had an air of humility and calmness unexpected from a New York Times #1 Bestselling author.
While I was trying to hide my freaking out, speaking to one of my heroes, he sat comfortably on the couch, casually answering questions, laughing, and partaking in conversation.
I quickly came to understand why people so readily opened up to him, for in the short 45 minutes I’d spent with him, our time together transformed from a formal interview to two friends, hanging out, learning about what it means to follow one’s dreams.
What inspired you to photograph every resident of New York?
“The shortest possible answer I can give is that I got fired, and I lost my job. I made the decision that I was going to try orient my life towards doing what I wanted to do all day long, because I spent the previous two years trying to make money. When I ended up losing my job, I didn’t have anything to show for that, so I said instead of spending my time trying to make money, I’m going to try to make just enough money to where I can spend my time however I wanted.
At the time I was photographing, which I really enjoyed, and I started gravitating towards pictures of people. After that, I had the idea, after visiting New York City and seeing the diversity and the amount of people there that, you know what, I think it would be a really cool thing to try to photograph 10,000 people on the streets of New York City and plot their photos on a map.
And that was just the seed of what Humans of New York turned into, which looked nothing like that in the end. But, what that did was that got me out there, doing work, every single day, and then, what Humans of New York evolved into came out of the work, as opposed to it being a fully formed idea.”
What was it like photographing and speaking to Hillary Clinton?
“In the 45 minutes they gave me [with Hillary], I really had time to do HONY with her. It was very interesting to be able to do a Humans of New York interview with somebody who’s been interviewed so many times before. I wanted to see if the Humans of New York style interview could bring out a new angle or a new perspective on this person that’s been interviewed by everybody. And it was very cool to see that the answer to that was yes.
“On the street I walk up to people, and I don’t have a pre-interview, I don’t have research, so it’s all just me trying to feel out who they are, starting from zero. Given the opportunity to interview someone [like Hillary], I didn’t know if I should do research, if I should look at other interviews, or if I should just walk in there from zero like I do on the street. And, I made the decision to start from scratch.
“The only planned question I had to ask her was ‘how are you different than people perceive you?’ Then the entire interview was just me playing off her answers. Walking out of there with that new angle, that new perspective, on somebody who has been interviewed so many times was, I think, a really great moment for HONY.”
With how much HONY has gained in popularity, do you ever feel like the responses you get are less genuine?
“That’s a very common question and a very good question, because that was something I was always worried about as the blog gets more popular. I mean – half the people I stop now have heard of it, and some people are huge fans, and I think they have spent a lot of time thinking about what they were going to say. What I can say is that if you’ve imagined being on HONY and you’ve imagined what your caption is going to be, the thing that you’ve imagined is never going to be what goes on.
“Basically, if somebody has planned what they were going to say, they get it out in the first 30 seconds, and then there’s a 45 minute interview after that in which we’re talking about things that they never planned. I’m very good at knowing when something is sincere and knowing when something is real, and that’s how I define a really good HONY post; it’s when somebody is really honest and open about their feelings. So, if anybody was presenting a side of themselves for the purpose of consumption that didn’t reflect some sort of inner truth, then it wouldn’t make it on the blog anyway.”
What advice would you give to an aspiring photographer?
“You’ve got to focus on the work. You can’t focus on recognition, or quality. I think one of the big things that led to HONY being so successful was the crazy idea I had that I was going to take 10,000 portraits, as opposed to if I had started saying ‘I want to make a Facebook page’ or ‘I want to get 10,000 followers.’ How many followers or likes I got was out of my control, but setting a metric for my work was something I could control regardless of who’s paying attention.”
How do you feel about the culture of support and positivity that your work has created?
“It’s really amazing. Humans of New York has the best culture on the internet. It sounds like a quality judgment that’s hard to prove, saying ‘Oh it’s the best culture on the internet,’ or ‘It’s the nicest people on the internet,’ but there are numbers that back it up. There are metrics. We’ve crowdfunded $10 million in the past year. These are people who show up. They donate to causes. You look at the comments section, the top 100 comments are almost always supportive.
“There’s just an amazing culture in there that doesn’t exist in too many places outside of Humans of New York. And that’s absolutely crucial for this kind of work, because of the raw honesty, the vulnerability, that people are showing, when they’re talking about what they’re guilty about or about their insecurities and their regrets. If there was a culture that was judgmental, or that made fun of the person, Humans of New York wouldn’t work. So, the culture is absolutely crucial to the blog surviving.
For most, to say a moment is life-changing is trite. It’s what we say after our favorite artist’s concert or a moment of bravery, standing up to perform our favorite karaoke jam. We are filled with a rush of adrenaline and euphoria, loudly proclaiming “my life will never be the same!”
Yet, after speaking with Brandon Stanton, about doing what you love and importance of finding a supportive culture, I didn’t feel euphoric. Instead, I felt somber, and deeply affected by what he’d said. Looking back on it, I felt truly changed.