The photoblog run by Brandon Stanton is one of my favourite new discoveries. Whether they be old, young, with their partner, family or friends, etc., all the photos give a tiny snapshot into the life of a stranger.
Most of the pictures have a quote. Sometimes the quotes are part of a conversation, sometimes just a snippet of what the person has said, or simply a caption of what's happening.
This blog captures emotion in a way you would miss with a simple picture. It is often true to say: "a picture paints 1000 words". But would you ever look at a very generic looking middle aged man and be given an impression of what's really on his mind?
I personally would assume a very generic life. Office worker, small family, average income; But this blog reminded me how everyone has a story you couldn't even imagine.
I've selected a few recent photographs that caught my eye. Some surprised me due to the quotes, some made me laugh or evoked sadness and empathy for these strangers I'll never even meet.
First we have that middle aged man.
"What’s your greatest struggle right now?"
"Dining with my daughter."
"Dining with your daughter?""She has an eating disorder. So she avoids every situation that involves eating with the family."
"My three year old daughter has figured out how to unlock my phone. Now she’s always calling people and saying ‘hello’ over and over."
"I have stage 3 melanoma, which puts me at a 48% chance of survival over the next 5 years. However, I have the ability to speed read very technical material, so I went to the library at Duke and read over 800 papers on melanoma, which doctors just don’t have the time to read. I found one very promising study that suggests chloro quinine, combined with the deprivation of a certain amino acid, has shrunk tumors in mice to almost nothing."
"I want to be a singer, a president, and a tennis player."
"I want to be a president, a teacher, a doctor, and a police."
"He’s wonderful in bed."
"I’m taking a puddlegram."
"The army stationed me down South when I was younger, and I couldn’t even use the same bathroom as white people. But things have changed so much. The younger generation isn’t nearly as racist. I’ve been sitting here for fifty years. So much has changed. This neighborhood used to be all black. A white person couldn’t even walk down this street. All the races kept to themselves. Now you’ve got Indians talking to Pakistanis, blacks talking to whites, everybody is here and learning from each other’s cultures. I’ve been sitting here for 50 years. Things are getting better."
This was so funny. I ran into this Mexican couple on a trail in Central Park, and they were lugging around all these balloons. I asked what the balloons were for, and the guy told me that he’d brought them all the way from Mexico. He said he’d concocted this elaborate plan, where he’d given balloons to different people around the city (starting with the hotel concierge), and sent the girl on a scavenger hunt to find them. "Just because?" I asked. "Just because," he said.
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When I got home, I had an email. It said:Brandon,I couldn’t tell you, but I was about to ask her to marry me.She said yes!Rodrigo
"I told her that if she wanted to start over, to meet where we first kissed. She was supposed to be here 15 minutes ago."
"What was the happiest moment of your life?""Well, it’s not now."
All these photographs and many others can be found at: http://www.humansofnewyork.com
