Most New York residents couldn’t tell you about their next door neighbors, let alone a complete stranger who has lived a lifetime in the metropolis.
Started by photographer Brandon Stanton, Humans of New York is a New York City-based photoblog that has received critical acclaim from The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Village Voice for its introspective look at Gotham’s citizens. Armed with only a camera and an intuitive need to find compelling stories, Stanton traverses the mean streets of New York, capturing photos and tales from random individuals.
His numerous postings and compositions have amounted to a widely appreciated book that became a bestseller in 2013. While the photos and stories are almost immediately shared via social media, Stanton’s content remains consistent in keeping the people anonymous. No names are ever shared. Only the stories —which are full of successes, sadness, trials, and tribulations —are given en mass to the public.
Truly inspired by the content that Brandon Stanton has offered to the rest of the world, we dug in and found 10 of the most inspiring ‘Humans of New York’ stories that will tug at your heartstrings. Enjoy!
1. “I’m just trying to live through this problem man created. Nature didn’t create the problem. Man created the problem. And I’m going to be honest, I’m going to say it, it was the European man who created this problem. European man invented the gun. Then he made a bigger gun, and he said: ‘I’m gonna keep this big gun for myself, and I’m gonna sell this small gun to you.’ And ever since then, he’s been keeping the big guns, and selling the small guns. So everybody’s got guns but none as big as him. And I’m through with it. I’m blind in one eye from Vietnam. If you want to die for this garbage game, that’s your fault. I’m through.”
forwp-incontent-ad2">2. “We’re getting divorced because we love each other, and we both realize that we don’t have enough of what the other needs. When we decided to get divorced, I wrote a note with all the things I loved about her, and gave it to her. She got very emotional and started crying. Then three days later, she wrote me a similar note. But here’s the thing— she wrote it on the back of a recycled piece of paper. She wrote it on the back of an advertisement or something. So I called her out on it. And she said: ‘I knew you were going to bring that up. If you cared, you wouldn’t mind what it was written on.’ And I said: ‘Well, if you cared, you’d have gotten a fresh piece of paper.'”
3. “I want to either open a liquor store or a funeral parlor.” “Why those two things?” “I figure those are the two things that everyone needs.”
4. “Bank robbery was my crime of choice. You know, I hadn’t committed a single crime until the age of 54. But then I robbed my first bank, and after that I went on quite a tear.”
5. “My goal is to run the 400m for the Dominican National Track Team.” “How close are you?” “I’m about two seconds away. But the last two seconds took me four years.”
6. “I don’t want to be the mom that my mom was. I have to be very present all the time, and very watchful of any patterns I might be repeating.” “What pattern are you most fearful of repeating?” “Shutting him down all the time. Not letting him have a voice.”
7. “I want to study engineering at MIT. I’ve still got two years until I graduate high school, so I’m trying to learn everything I can. I’m a certified cable installer, and I’m also certified in fiber optic cable, but I still need my copper based systems certification. I practice making cables all the time. I can write the perfect essay telling you how to make cables, but I still need to work on keeping my hand steady. You need a very steady hand when you’re working with fiber optic cables. So for twenty minutes everyday, I work on balancing my tools on my hand, just like this.”
8. “It was amazing to me how actors like Denzel Washington could reach out and affect people, even in The Gambia where I lived. So I decided I had to be an actor. My father prayed for me for 5 minutes on the runway. He was holding onto my hand and praying over and over, and I could see everyone watching from the windows of the plane. It was a little embarrassing but he would not let go. Finally he told me: ‘Now go to America. But do not forget where you came from.’ I first flew to Oklahoma, because I knew other Gambians there, but I was running out of money, and I was eating nothing but noodles, and one day it got so bad that my nose started bleeding. And I said to myself: ‘How am I going to be an actor in Oklahoma? If I’m going to be hungry, I’m going to be hungry in New York.’ So I borrowed money for a Greyhound bus, and I rode for two days on that bus. And for the whole ride, I had nothing but water.”
9. “I had a child when I was sixteen. I got kicked out of high school because of all the absences. My family and community pretty much wrote me off. But right away I got a job at a sporting goods store. Soon I was able to get a job as a receptionist at a tax company, and they gave me enough responsibilities that I learned how to do taxes. Eventually I learned enough to become an associate. Then I got offered a job at a smaller company, and even though it was a pay cut, they offered me
responsibility over all the books– accounts payable, accounts receivable, everything. It was less money but I wanted that experience so I took the risk. And I’m so glad I did, because six months later, the controller of that company left and I was given that position. They told me they couldn’t officially call me the controller because I didn’t have a college degree. So I finished my degree 5 months ago– just to make it official! So after having a child at sixteen, I made it all the way to controller of a company, without even having a college degree. Can you believe that? Honestly, I’ve been waiting to tell that story so long that I told it to a customer service representative on the phone last week. She was nice about it and pretended to care.”10. “I left Belize when I was 12 or 13, just as all my friends were getting swept up into gangs. The gangs would get kids to do the dirty work, because they knew the kids wouldn’t go to jail. I actually have an old photograph of the group of friends I used to hang out with– there were seven us. After I came to America, they were all killed in the exact order that they were standing in that photograph.”
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