← B&H Photography Podcast
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A
This week's episode is sponsored by Leica. You're listening to the B and H photography podcast. For 50 years, B& H has been the professional source for photography, video, audio and more. For your favorite gear, news and reviews, Visit us@bh.com or download the B and H app to your iPhone or Android device. Now here's your host, Derek Fassbender.
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B
Welcome listeners. I'm Derek Fassbender, host of the BH Photography Podcast and and I'm Mike Weinstein,
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A
the show's technical producer and audio engineer. And I'm Jill Waterman, the podcast Senior creative producer.
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B
It takes a lot of guts to engage with a stranger on the street, ask probing questions about their struggles, and come away with a portrait and a story as a record of the human connection that was made. Now imagine repeating this process countless times over 15 years under the moniker Humans of New York and seeing what started as a passion project take the world by Storm. In today's show, we're privileged to chat with this 21st century archivist of everyday citizens and their lived experiences. But before we start, here's a bit more about our distinguished guest. Brendan Stanton is the writer and photographer behind Humans in New York, a storytelling platform with over 30 million followers. He's also the creator of Dear New York, an immersive art installation held at New York City's Grand Central Terminal during November 2025 and accompanied by a companion book. Over the past 15 years, Brandon has photographed and interviewed over 10,000 people in 40 different countries around the world. During this time, he's helped raise over $20 million in support of various causes and individuals who've been featured in his work. Brandon is also the author of four number one New York Times best selling books which have sold millions of copies around the world. Humans of New York in 2013, Human Humans of New York Stories in 2015, Humans in 2020, Tanqueray in 2022, and most recently, Dear New York in 2025. In addition to the books, Brandon has given over 100 keynote speeches on the power of connection and has facilitated executive level workshops for some of the world's most respected companies aimed at increasing team cohesion. He currently lives in New York City with his wife and three children. Brandon Stanton, welcome to the show.
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A
Thank you. It's nice to be here.
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B
It's great to have you on now. It's like all the questions that we've had over the years, it's like they're all rushing back into my head and, you know, thinking we've seen the Interviews. We've seen the work all over the place. I want to start back at the beginning. Look, it's been well documented. I know you've probably answered the question a million times about when you got started. I want to narrow in a little more specifically. Do you remember that first person you approached on the street?
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A
I do. It was when I was in Chicago. I mean, I first picked up my camera as a way to relieve stress. I was working in finance and my job was going horribly. I was on the brink of getting fired. And, you know, my life was miserable because all I could think about was I was going to lose my job. And so I actually got a camera as a way to kind of relieve stress and create some sort of identity for myself outside of work. And I was in Chicago at the time, and I would go to downtown Chicago on the weekends, and I was just kind of interacting with the environment, photographing, I don't know, graffiti and nature and all the usual suspects when you first get the camera and you're completely enamored by your ability to capture an image. And I was in the subway one day and I looked up and there were these two kids and they did not know each other. They had gotten on at different stops, but they were standing next to each other and they were both looking up. And I don't know what they were looking up at because it's not in frame, but they have the exact same look on their face and they're standing right next to each other. And I thought it was such a great little portrait of childhood. And I remember how terrified I was to take this photo. This is before Instagram. The iPhone had just come out. The culture of photographing ordinary people and random people was not very established. But, you know, I got over that fear and I picked up my camera and I kind of nervously took the photo. I think I made eye contact with the mothers and got some non verbal consent. But yeah, I remember, you know, having such a sense of pride after I'd taken that photo because even though I hadn't been photographing for very long, I knew that I had taken something that had some sort of scarcity and some sort of rarity because I had gotten over this fear of interacting with a stranger and had come out with an artifact of that interaction, which was the portrait.
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B
How close were you? Was it something where you were like 10, 15ft away?
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A
No, I was really close. And which is what made it different because I'd taken some photos of, like, people. If I'm being just completely honest, I Was looking for any lane that would allow me to take photos all day long, zip forward. A few weeks later, I did get fired. And, you know, my goal was, I love photography. I just want to find some sort of structure and some sort of, I don't know, direction and lane that will allow me to just keep pursuing the activity. So I was just looking for something that I could do that was maybe a little bit different than everything else that people were doing. And I noticed that when I photographed people, that was a little bit more rare. And then I think when I was in that subway, and, yes, this person was only like 3ft away, there was an intimacy involved with it because of the proximity that in combination with the randomness of the person, was pretty powerful. And that's when I started to really pursue this type of photography. That was street photography, but it was not candid. It involved an interaction. It involved an invitation to enter someone's life. And I think ever since then, the whole thrust of the art and the whole thrust of how I try to evolve it is increasing levels of intimacy with random people that I encounter.
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B
Now, you as a person, is this something that those that grew up with you or knew you would say, oh, this? That's Brandon. Like, yeah, he's always been. Or was it something where you were forcing yourself outside of your comfort zone and interacting with people or random strangers?
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I mean, I think, like, everyone. I've had many seasons in my life. You know, when I was very young, you know, I was extremely extroverted. You know, I went to a small school. There was three kids in the high school. I was probably the person in the school that knew the most people's names. You know, I did have this kind of fascination, and I just thought people were interesting. Yeah, I really liked people. Then. 19, 20, 21, I got into drugs and became a drug addict and became much more introverted and kind of in my own head. And that kind of culminated with trading bonds. You know, I was staring at a computer screen all day. In finance, I was still addicted to drugs. I was taking a lot of speed and just very, very much in my own head and about my own identity. You know, the camera in general just got me out of my own head. Interacting with the world, kind of exchanging energy with the world, and then taking it to the next level where I was stopping people. I would say it kind of plugged me back into an inherent nature that I had gotten away from, which is just a general, deep curiosity and marvel at the infinite complexities and infinite surprises of human Nature.
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B
Yeah, that's one of those things that you never know what you're going to get. You never know until you're there. I think. I'm sure you've had this probably a million times where you're looking and you're like, that person looks like they probably don't want to be bothered. And then it ends up being the ones who you think are going to be the scariest are the ones that you end up talking to for two hours.
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A
So in this kind of work, I mean, a huge part of it is absorbing rejection if you're protecting yourself from the no. I mean, even now, even with the number one New York Times bestselling books, even with the Instagram page, even with all these proofs of credibility I have still about 50% of people are saying no. And in the beginning, that was like eight or nine out of 10 people, because I was nervous. Instagram didn't even exist. I didn't even have a website. So I'm walking up to people like, my voice is trembling. I'm like, I'm probably making them nervous. Why is this guy nervous? And asking to take their photo with, you know, no credible reason? I think I, you know, I probably scared a lot of people in the beginning. And it would have been very easy to start choosing the people that I approached for the purpose of avoiding the no, which means, oh, this demographic has said no to me three times in a row. And it would start funneling it towards the people that are most likely to say yes, which are digital, native. Just the sort of categories of people that you might suspect might be more willing to say yes to a random person asking their photograph. And so very early on, I told myself I could never not approach somebody just because I was afraid or thought they would say no, because then the work would get funneled into a very particular type of person. So the huge part of the process was just getting able to absorb the nos, not take them personally, no matter how they were delivered, in order to get as broad of a representation as possible. Like, for example, in the Hasidic community, nine out of 10 people in the Hasidic community might say no. But if I wanted to represent the stories and the opinions of the Hasidic community, I needed to keep asking until I found, but, you know, the 1 out of 10 that would say yes. And you could apply that to any sort of community that is not especially excited about having people photograph them or, you know, approach and ask for their photograph. So I think a huge part of it was, you know, Just being willing to go into places where I knew that most people would say no and keep asking for the purpose of representing as broad of a cross section of New York as possible.
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B
I gotta tell you, your approach to getting a no. When I watched the One profile, I think it was cbs, and you know, a woman declines and you say, that's all right. No, you don't have to feel bad. That's the answer I hear the most. I've been around a lot of street photographers. That was the most disarming calm. It's okay. I'm like, wow. Usually it's like shots of the ego. Damn, I don't want to do this anymore.
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A
Well, I really appreciate you saying that. That's kind of you to say. And I appreciate it because it's something I had to work at and it's gotten better every single year. But, yeah, you know, in the beginning, first of all, I have no money. I'm in New York. I'm trying to make this thing work. I've been out at it for months. There's no Instagram, there's no social media at the time. I'm just piling up portraits of people. The initial idea was I was gonna create a photographic census of the city, that I was gonna take 10,000 street portraits and kind of plot them on a map and represent the entire city. And I was kind of in a mindset back then where I would, like, convince myself that this next portrait is gonna be the one that really tipped the scales. You know, this next portrait was gonna be so interesting. And so the no's were really hard back then. And they were also hard because they make you feel weird about yourself. I mean, I think that's the hardest part about the no is not taking the no as some sort of commentary on the legitimacy of your work, about the meaning or the value of your work. Because, you know, when I was early and I did not know if this was a good idea, I didn't know if I was crazy. A lot of people thought I was crazy. And it's hard for those nos not to be a mirror, you know what I mean? And make you feel like what you are doing is somehow intrusive, is somehow rude, is somehow not socially acceptable. So get getting past that in the beginning. And now I've actually gone so far away from that to where I want even the nose to be a positive experience. Like, I want even the people that say no to me in the rudest, angriest way. I want to try to reverse that energy a little Bit. So that person is left a little bit better than I found them. I'm not always successful. Sometimes I'm having bad days, sometimes I'm tired. Sometimes I will mirror that energy. But it is a practice of mine. If somebody comes at me with a very irritated no. To not meet that with irritation, to not mirror that irritation, but to just stay calm and stay ground. No, that's no problem.
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B
You know.
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A
No is the most common thing that I hear. Have a wonderful day. Because the, you know, the older I get, the more that I view, you know, my job and my art is the interaction I have with the person. The photo is an artifact of that interaction. The story that comes out of it is an artifact of that interaction. But the thing that I can really control and the thing that I want to be as special and additive as possible to both my life, the life of my audience and the life of the person being interviewed is that interaction I have with them on the street. So even if that isn't. No, that is still part of my art to manage that interaction and to have it be a positive experience for the person I know encounter. And again, that was a journey. That was not something I was born with, which is why I appreciate you noticing it. Thank you.
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B
Now, of course, I mean, look, I photograph in the street as well. I'm a tall white guy who wears a backwards hat. And the number of times I've had to tell people, no, I'm not Brandon. And the look of. It's like, people. You'll see people watching you take a photo, and then they'll come over and it's like some. You know, half the time it's, are you humans in New York? Are you the humans in New York guy and. Or are you Brandon? It's like they're trying to. Like, if I say his name, and I'm like, no. And it's like the look of disappointment that comes over their face. But no, there's just something about your character. And, you know, we gotta remind the younger generation what it was like when you first started doing this humans in New York thing. It was not like it is now. And I think that you're probably one of, if not the preeminent photographer responsible for people stopping other people on the street and wanting to get to know them and get their story. Because early days of social media, if you were posting portraits, it was like, who cares? We want to see. That was when Urbex was in, and people wanted to see helicopter photos and these, you know, really, really, you know, dynamic city Shots and all the urban exploration was in. And I think once with the rise of what you were doing, people started to care about other people's stories. And it wasn't really about the quality of the portrait, it was about the story behind the portrait. Can you talk a little bit about, I mean, starting as a new photographer and as anyone who knows street photography or capturing portraits on the street, it's nerve wracking to take a photo, right? Number one, to approach somebody, a stranger, but then when they, you know, ask, can I see? And you're a new photographer, you're like, oh, no.
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A
I always say no. Oh, do you? Well, just because when somebody takes a portrait of you, the person who's looking at the portrait is like taking you as a whole. Whereas when you're looking at your own portrait, you're zooming in on your imperfections and just like, yeah. So I learned early on that I'll tell you what, I'm going to write about you, but I'm not going to get into an argument about how good you look in this photo or that photo, because I want the most authentic photo. I don't want the one that you look the most polished. But yeah, the process was. And I think you're right, you know, I think it very much. Because if you'll remember, you know, it all kind of began with me at the age of 26, having come relatively late to the game, to photography. But I loved it. So I had this thing that I loved that I wanted to keep doing that I enjoyed intrinsically as an activity, not because of the status it could accrue me, not because of the money it could accrue me. I loved it because it got me out of my own head and gave me a license and excuse to go out and interact with the energy of the world. And I want to preserve that. And so much of the path was preserving that was okay. I'm not going to create something better photographically than somebody else because too many people have too much experience compared to me. So my only hope is to kind of strike on something different and to figure out what I could possibly do and what I could possibly offer that nobody else is doing. And so much of my evolutions, and even as an artist, I continue to think in that line, I want to continue to push my art in directions that given my skill set, my expertise and my experience, I am creating something that is so differentiated, I'm the only one that can create it. And everybody has that thing, you know, and normally it's going to come from your lived experience. But there's something that only you have the repetition and the experience and the talent to create. And so I was always looking for what that was. And a few months into stopping people on the street all day long, I realize, you know, I'm still way behind in composition and white balance and focus and, you know, other kind of technical areas of taking a photograph. But you know What? I've stumped 3,000 people on the street at this point. And you put your finger on it earlier, it's all about the calmness. And having stopped 3,000 people, I'm able to approach a random person on the street in a place of being centered and place of being calm. And it is that calm that is able to center the other person and take an inherently nerve wracking interaction which is a stranger stopping you on the streets of New York City. And in a very short amount of time bringing that to a place of calm and presence where something authentic can be revealed. And you know, if there's something that I've been chewing on for the last 15 years trying to perfect and make as good as possible, it is the creation of that space on the street where authenticity can come out. You know, I think a candid photo is going to have a level of authenticity. Then when you stop somebody on the street, you lose it a little bit. People kind of become stage managed, they become self conscious. That's kind of the middle ground. But if you can push through it and you can stay calm and centered, then you can push through what I believe is even deeper levels of authenticity that you can't catch with a zoom lens across the street. But it's not something that's easily given, it's something that's earned. And so it's been trying to figure out that energy exchange and bringing each conversation to a place where, where that authenticity is possible.
- [19:34]
B
Wow, that is such a great point. And it's been long talked about, especially in the realms of street photography. Candid versus stopped and posed. And you never hear that kind of third tier right there, which is what you just said so beautifully, pushing past to still get authenticity out of a stopped interaction where you are engaging with somebody, but it doesn't come out posed. Now, does that have to do with the interaction you're having? Is it almost like a disarming as you're talking to them and to them it becomes apparent that you're more about the story?
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A
Well, it's because when you're getting somebody across the street with a zoom lens, you're Getting somebody in a moment where they're not conscious of themselves. And there's a truth in that. And a lot of my favorite photographers, the one that always comes to mind is Daniel Arnold. He's a friend of mine and I just love him. And it's just like there's this truth in his photos that he catches people in these unguarded, guarded moments. It's because they are not conscious of being documented. But I don't think it's this or that. It's not staged or candid. There is a place you can get to with a person in a structure of human interpersonal interaction where that person can lose that self consciousness once again and become their natural selves in your presence, in which you then are able to document. And that is why, as my work progressed, I started focusing. Don't get me wrong, the photography is an important part of it. I've been working hard on my lighting, I've been working hard on my composition. I've been working hard on those elements. The writing is a big part of it. I've been working hard on my structure, I've been working hard on my arcs. I've been working hard on all of those things. In relation to the editorial arts, however, the thing that I think about most deeply is how to pull out these moments of candor and these moments of authenticity without which none of those other crafts matter. Because that is the fuel that really took humans of New York Parabolic a decade ago or 12 years ago, whenever that was. And that is the path that I continue trying to follow. Because it's the scarcity to me. Everybody's got a cell phone now, everybody's got a camera. The scarcity is not going to be the image. It's not going to be the image. And I still like to think that, you know, great writing is scarce. But, you know, in the age we're entering now, there's lots of words out there too. There's a record amount of words and there's a record amount of images being produced every single day. And it seems to be doubling each month. And so any sort of scarcity is going to come from a human interaction. It's going to come from something real that cannot be replicated in the digital world. And so, you know, increasingly that is where I am focusing my work on the creation of those moments.
- [22:43]
B
Again, such a great point. It's like the authenticity is so scarce. We're a society that's become force fed. A narrative, a script, everything is curated. And I think it's really through your work especially, it's allowed us to look within and be okay with the downsides and be okay with the struggles. I know that's something that, you know, we've all faced it, and every. Everyone faces struggles. And I think that's what's so dynamic about not just, you know, your entire body of work and what you've done is it's okay to look, struggle in the face and say, you know what? Sometimes we're down. We're not always up. And I think it's that authenticity that's scarce. It's not only showing the smiles, only showing the good moments. I mean, social media has become a place where you champion your victories and hide the real you. And this authenticity is what really drives a narrative with people who want to come. They want to see people who are just like them. They don't always want to see the actors and the people who are living supposedly great lives all the time. They want to see people who have overcome struggles. And it's that inspiration that you can take. I can't tell you the number of stories I've read through humans in New York where it's like, you know what? Wow, they got it worse than me. I. I got nothing. You know what? And if I take that for a day, look, that's a day that I'm having a different mindset. And tomorrow it can be something else that inspires. But I think it's that little drip and drab of inspiration through authenticity that really sets you apart.
- [24:19]
A
Thank you for saying that. That was very kind. But, yes. And I think when you say struggles are okay, it's like, it's more than okay. To me. There is something profound about our struggles, because our struggles are the thing that we sit with the most. It's the thing that we push up against the most. Like, for example, if there is a father and his son or daughter is going through a horrible drug addiction, they might be performing fantastically at work. They might have this great LinkedIn identity. They might have this very carefully crafted Persona, but the thing that they are thinking about the most is their child's addiction. That is the thing that they are sitting with and pushing up against the most. And so when you find somebody struggle and you find the thing that they have been living with and chewing on and trying to overcome and transcend and work around, you find the thing that they are able to speak to with more specificity, more granularity, and more authenticity than anyone else in the world. You know, when I'm sitting in front of Somebody I'm trying to find the thing that they can tell me that the 10,000 other people that I have interview have not told me. And that requires getting into the granularity of their lived experience. It's not going to be something they heard on the podcast. It's not going to be something that they've read in a book, because I promise you, I've heard all of those things hundreds of times. It's going to be something that only you have gone through, that is so specific that you're the only person who can talk about it. And from that place comes the most poetic insight, the most beautiful sentiments, the most beautiful stories. I always say if you find somebody's struggle, you can find their genius. So it's like even beyond being okay to talk about struggles, that is the place that we are speaking from, that we can speak to with the most gravitas, the way that connects the most with other people.
- [26:30]
B
Now, how do you find who you want to photograph or approach on the street? You know, is there something that you're looking for or. Or is it just really. Are you guided by a vibe or a feeling?
- [26:41]
A
And so, you know, that has been an evolution as well. It's differed from season to season. The first Humans of New York book was very much colorful characters in New York City, and it was the people who stood out, the people who had their own look or who were visually very different. And then I started to believe that the stories were the most important thing. And then I just started looking for people with time. People sitting on a bench, people leaning against a wall, people smoking a cigarette, anybody that looked like I could get 30 minutes to an hour out of them. In the latest season that, you know, I've been looking for more of a happy medium, I think I went a little too far away from the photography where it became all about the story. So with Dear New York, which is my latest book, I wanted every photo and every story to be the best that I possibly could be. I didn't want it to be, oh, this one's a great photo, but a less intriguing or less interesting story. Or this one is a great story, but a bad photo. So what I was looking for in this last season were people in good light. And I love that because good light is so democratic. Anybody could be in good light. So I was really walking around these last two or three years as I was creating Dear New York, looking for people who were in really good light. Those are the people I would interview.
- [27:58]
B
Interesting. And I love the evolution as well. Where it would be very easy to lean into either the story or the portrait and kind of take your lane there. Which leads me to the question, what kind of photographer do you consider yourself? If someone were to ask you, are you a street photographer? Are you a portraitist? Are you just a photographer? How do you label yourself?
- [28:19]
A
I mean, humans in New York never really fit well into a genre that's been very difficult to. For me to describe. I've done series on refugees, series in federal prisons, series on cancer wards, series in Gaza that would fit comfortably in journalism. The random stories are kind of more about interviewing and, you know, anthropology almost. In a way, it's a collector of human experience. So it brings together, you know, so many different elements, and I try to think about them all. And I think, you know, when you asked how I defined. Define myself, I think the only way I can honestly answer that is to say what it is that I spend the most time thinking about, trying to improve and trying to grow. And that is the interview process. I mean, the one constant through it all. I've done video, I've done remote stories across the world. I've done stories on the streets of New York work. I worked in a few different mediums. One constant for 15 years is that every one of them involved an interview with somebody that I just met. So it's a specific kind of interview that has no context and is under a time constraint. And so if there's one thing I look at the skill set that is most unique to humans of New York, it's the conversation that happens in the interview that happens on the street. I would not define myself primarily as a photographer. I know other people have other people use the word storyteller. Yeah, it's its own thing, and it involves a lot of different elements. And I try to be as good as possible at all.
- [30:05]
B
Yeah, Interviewing someone you just met sounds a lot like my last couple weeks of preparation for this is true. You got to interview somebody who interviews people for a living and is one of the best to do it. So it's like. Yeah, it does. I mean, because you want to. You want to bring out a side of them and you want to put something out there that is not, you know, scattered all over the Internet. And you don't want to just regurgitate what everybody else is.
- [30:32]
A
Yeah. And there's different ways of doing it. Like, I really appreciated this interview because you have a deep familiarity with my work that leads to some very unique questions. And so I think a lot of your interviewing skills and the Reason that this interview is so interesting is because of your preparation and your familiarity. Those are two weapons that I don't have in my arsenal when I'm approaching somebody. In fact, I only go up to people with about three questions. What is your biggest challenge right now? What is the biggest challenge you've overcome? And then sometimes I'll move to who has had the greatest impact on your life. And then after that, it is all just extremely active listening. And every question that comes after that is based on the answer that the person has given me beforehand. So it's very much about controlling my mental state, controlling my presence, controlling how deeply I am listening to somebody, those sort of intangible things. There is technical craft involved because I've done it, you know, 10,000 times, and I can kind of see a story coming. I know that I need more description here. I think I need more emotional resonance here, so I want to know what somebody feels like. But the thing that I'm constantly having to tap into that is the delineator between a good interview or a bad interview is how present I'm able to be, how calm I'm able to be, how calm I'm able to make the other person and how well I listen.
- [31:56]
B
I'm glad you brought that back up, because it was something that you had mentioned earlier that I wanted to seize on. Is those days where you're not having a good day, the days where you might just not feel like, you know, there's days where you just want to go out and put your headphones on and walk through the world and not talk to a soul and sometimes even take pictures. How do you handle those days?
- [32:17]
A
I won't even put myself my headphones on, Derek. Because that smallest little bit of separation from the world can be the difference between talking myself out of approaching somebody and approaching somebody. Wow.
- [32:29]
B
Interesting.
- [32:29]
A
The effort it takes to take off my AirPods and put them in my pocket. By that time, I might have talked myself out of approaching somebody. So I won't even listen to music. It's very much a mindset for me. It's habits, and I set these habits very early. Like I said, I used to be a drug addict. I was a very bad drug addict from the age of, like, you know, 19 to 24. Then I hit my own version of rock bottom, and I was like, okay, I'm just going to focus on doing the work. That's all. I'm just going to show up every single day and do the work I'm supposed to do. And that involved Going back to community college and doing my homework every single day and just doing all of the things that I always avoided. I would read 100 pages a day. I would run a mile a day. And so I set these habits very early in life. And then all I've done is whenever I evolve or move into a new sphere, I just change my habits. For humans of New York, I. When. When I started photographing every day, I stopped reading a hundred pages every single day. And it was all about getting a certain amount of portraits every day. Then when I started doing the interviews, I. For years, I did it. I wanted four stories every single day. Then I moved to writing. So I would start writing two hours a day. No matter what evolution I make into a different type of art, it's all based on the same building blocks, which is a commitment to myself that I'm going to repeat the activity every single day. If I'm in a writing phase, I'm writing every single day because I know that that is the one thing that I can control. And so any resilience that I have on the street and the ability to weather the. No, I'd say the bedrock of it is just an accountability that I've had with myself for 15 years now that I'm going to go through the motions, no matter what.
- [34:24]
B
Commitment, consistency, accountability, structure, evolution of goals. It's all you're doing. You're giving yourself the work and you're staying consistent and making sure that you're holding fast to.
- [34:35]
A
Well, that's where all the beauties come out of. You know, none of the big evolutions of humans of New York, or even the idea for humans of New York itself, came out of me sitting with a journal, you know, in a quiet room, thinking it was perfect idea, and then gathering the motivation and the effort to go out and do it. All of it, all of it was iterated out of a practice of getting out there and doing the activity every single day. And every thing that I've built since then. This genre that we're currently trying to describe, because it involves interviewing, it involves writing, it involves photography, and, you know, one of the reasons that it's hard to describe is because it's unique. And one of the reasons that it's unique is that it was iterated one tiny step at a time out of getting out on the street every single day and practicing the craft. You know, I always say that it's a long road to something to say that, oh, I'm just going to start doing it every single day. And I'm just going to constantly ask myself, how can I make it better? How can I like it more? And just constantly show up every single day trying to make my work 0.05% better every single day. When I say better, I mean better. Not based on what other people like, but what you like. Can I make it better? And it's a long circuitous road to make art that way and to evolve your work that way, but if you're willing to put in the work, on the other end of it is something unique and something singular. Because I can go back and tell you, you know, with every single element and attribute of Humans of New York, where I was on the street when I accidentally discovered it, and we can go through a hundred of them. But it all came out of again, focusing on the activity, focusing on, I'm a photographer, I'm going to photograph every single day. That's what I'm going to do. And then everything that was built on top of that just came out of the practice.
- [36:39]
B
Now, are you taking notes or can you talk about the evolution of remembering the stories? You know, I'm sure there's times where you're like, you walk away and you're like, damn, what was their name again?
- [36:51]
A
Right. And that was an evolution too. You know, when I first started Humans of New York, I kind of viewed it more as like a personal blog. I would go out and I would have these adventures and these experiences with people. Then I would go home and almost use the. It was on a website back then as my diary. Whereas I'm just writing my impressions and my remembrances about it. And I remember one time I had this guy who's a great guy. I was writing kind of long form first person accounts of my experiences. And there was this guy that was like building planes for kids in Central Parks. And he was such a crazy character. He was like a Scottish guy. And he said the F bomb every three seconds that he's like building these little model planes for kids. So he's like Santa Claus that just cursed all the time. I was trying to like capture his language and I got an email, was like, hey, I know this person. There's no way he would have said that many times. And I was like, okay, now I should probably not be writing these from memory. Yeah. Because maybe I did add two or three more F bombs just because that's how I remembered it. Then I started taking notes. I would transcribe hour long interviews onto the computer as they happened into my iPhone as they happened. And I Told myself that that was kind of necessary because I'd watch the notes appear as I was writing them, and that would kind of help me see the structure of what the final story was going to be. And so I could kind of tailor my questions. And I told myself that I needed that for a long time to the point where I remember I was interviewing the president of Rwanda for two hours. It was just a beautiful access because he's a fascinating man, Paul Kagame. And they came together in like 40 cameras. And I showed up on my computer and I was typing every word he said as he said it, like, staring at my computer screen. And his aide was like, I don't know if you want to do that. And I was like, no, I have to do it this way. I have to do it. So I wasn't even making eye contact with him. I was just like, transcribing everything he said, real time for two hours. I finally, in the last three or four years, moved away from that to where I do audio record everything now. And then I will take the 20 to 30 page transcription that comes out with it, and then I will start crafting the singular expression, which again, you know, I think the way it works, you see it on humans of New York. You have one person examining some sort of theme or experience in their life in a very linear, encompassing way that lands. What that looks like in the interview process is all of those insights and all of those details coming out one spoonful at a time through, you know, very active listening, very persistent, almost forensic questioning. And then it is reassembled into a singular statement. One thing that my friend Tony said, he runs a nonprofit called Harlem Grown that I did a feature on, he said, you took my words and wrote a song. And I always really appreciated that feedback because that's how I see it. It's like it's all the person's words, but, you know, if there's an unseen magic to it, again, it's in the interview that draws those words out, often haltingly, sometimes a little reluctantly. One sentence at a time, and then it is reassembled into a singular expression.
- [40:12]
B
Photographer, stenographer, songwriter, Brandon Stanton. It's wide ranging. Well, this seems like a good time to take a short break. So let's stand up, stretch, shake it out. If you're already standing, have a seat, relax, and when we come back, we'll continue our conversation with the chronicler of human stories, Brandon. Stan.
- [40:36]
A
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- [41:42]
B
And we are back with the inimitable Brandon Stanton. And during that break, you know, we talked unemployment, we talked motivation to going out there and picking up a camera. And it's funny because man, when I really started getting out there in the streets, I just got fired. It's the same thing. It's like a job I hated. I was miserable. I was begging to be fired for months and months.
- [42:01]
A
I had had six months of unemployment when I got fired and so I had six months to try to figure it out. I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor and bed sty, eating like two meals a day and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and just trying. I just trying to get something to take off and get off the ground before that unemployment ran out. And I just managed to barely do it. To understand how wild humans of New York is. The first two or three years of humans of New York, I had a flip phone. I could only get text messages for the first two or three years. Yeah.
- [42:35]
B
Now one thing, you know, that just jumped into my head, Brandon, is it's like you're down and out, you're going through a rough time. And literally I remember turning on the TV and there was some show where it was like people who were down and out and it was reality tv and I'm like, man, even these people are making it. They got a TV show.
- [42:55]
A
What am I doing wrong? Like, how do I.
- [42:57]
B
So it was like that was almost like a driving factor for you. You know, you talk about sleeping on a mattress and it's like you lose your job and are you going out there and you're running into all different kinds of struggles. Is that making you feel better? In a way? You know, we talked about, like the therapeutic aspect of talking to people, right.
- [43:16]
A
Well, I mean, even how, you know, when I am out talking with somebody on the street, because remember, I am trying to get each conversation to a place where that person is not self conscious. They're not thinking about how they're being perceived. They're not thinking about carefully architecting this Persona. They're just thinking about the truth, and they're just thinking about what's real, and they're thinking about what happened. And getting somebody to that place involves me getting to that place where I'm not thinking about my problems, I'm not thinking about my identity, I'm not thinking about how I'm being perceived. And these are things that I'm constantly worried about in the. The process of my daily life. You know, I'm not somebody that is just walking around Zen all of the time. And I just bring that Zen into the framework of my interviews with people. I'm somebody that is, you know, is struggling with anxieties and, you know, compulsions and obsessiveness towards my work. You know, all of these things that I'm working on for myself that, you know, I get inside my own head and I cannot solve through thoughts alone. And getting in front of a person to do my job correctly. Again, I don't want to present it as something like moral or spiritual that like, oh, I've reached this higher plane than other people where I can completely listen to somebody. It's part of my craft. In order to do my job correctly, I have to focus on nothing but this other person. I've got 30 minutes with them. We're on Fifth Avenue. They've got to leave for a meeting, they're going somewhere. I've got a very short amount of time to get somewhere very deep with them. And that requires all of my attention. And so, yes, you know, as a byproduct, again, not as an aim. I wasn't out there trying to turn myself into this vessel for other people's stories. It was very much cracked, focused. You know, I wanted to do my work as well as I possibly could, but that required this negation of ego, that required getting out of my own head because I only had 30 minutes. And the only way to get somewhere very deep in 30 minutes is to listen with your entire body and follow the thread as concertedly as you possibly can. And so, you know, I do have these moments where it gets me out of My fear. It gets me out of my worry. It gets me out of my anxiety. And that's just a byproduct of the practice, a byproduct of the process, as opposed to something that I'm targeting, that I'm trying to do.
- [46:01]
B
And I think that speaks to you being really immersed. And like you just said, you're focused on only that person.
- [46:08]
A
And that's the interview, you know, and I bet it's like the interview gives you a license to do that because you think about, like, normally when we're having conversations with people, like, what are we doing? A lot of times we're waiting for the moment where we can demonstrate our intelligence, where we can show our own experience, where we can maybe demonstrate our value to that other person. If we're at a networking meeting and if we're interviewing somebody, think about when we get interviewed. You're normally being evaluated. Somebody's asking you these questions for the purpose of ranking you or grading you. I mean, what Humans New York did was it gave me this very unique tool, which was the interview for no other purpose but to understand another person. And that is what unlocked so much of the power and the beauty is that, like, this specific, strange type of interviewing had basically a framework where there was no other motive but to just understand the person. And that creates this kind of safe place, this safe feeling where all of this other magic comes out. And it's the interview. It's like the interview gives you the license to go deep. It gives you the framework to go deep. And so this was just this license I was carrying around on the street that I could walk up to somebody and say, you know, hey, can we have a very deep conversation about what's going on in your life? And it was this. Again, you can feel me almost currently even thinking through it in this season of my life, that it's almost an excuse to go deep without going deep being the reason that the interview existed.
- [48:04]
B
That hits. I got to take a moment, absorb it. That really hits right there. And I think going back to, you know, like, you saying you have these three questions, it's almost like that's the warming up that's going to get me in. And you know that those three questions are often going to spawn something. It's almost like that takes you to the next three questions.
- [48:28]
A
So about getting into that flow state. And it's just like when you think about people in flow state, like when they got the eyes kind of squinted, but really focusing on something, and they're forgetting about themselves. You know, normally it's when they're painting or when they are, you know, lost in street photography or that they're lost in something. There's very few frameworks or situations where that flow state can be achieved in the presence of another person. Because we are so worried in conversations with other people, people about how we're coming across or achieving some sort of objective. The interview allowed me to reach this almost aligned incentive with the person that I was interviewing, because my job was to express their story in the first person, not my interpretation of their story, not my opinion of their story, but to express their version of their story in the way that is most recognizable to them. We have this moment of aligned incentives where it's just like I can completely lose myself in another person's lived experience, in their version of their lived experience. And I don't know what other framework allows you to sit at the feet of another person and completely forget about yourself. And so I think a lot about the interview as some sort of back door into a state of mind that I would never be able to get in with another person if it did not exist.
- [50:21]
B
Now you talk about, you know, kind of taking the spotlight off yourself and allowing someone else to really take that. That moment on their self. And at that point, you're a listener, you're the third party listening to them. And it tracks with your entire trajectory. I mean, even from the beginning, you have always been focused on philanthropy and on using whatever platform. You know, from when you were just starting out and you had, you know, just a crumb of a platform, then you used that step to do good for others. Can you talk a little bit about that approach? I mean, it's gotta be hard, especially when you're struggling on your own, for you to think of others on a grand scale. I mean, that's awesome, man.
- [51:06]
A
Well, I appreciate that. Well, thank you for saying that. And again, I want to say that, you know, so much of that decision making was not me trying to be more ethical than other artists or more selfless than other artists. So much of that was me wanting to create the best work possible. And I realized early on that the less I was in it and the more invisible I was, the better the work was. You know what I mean? Where it's like, if I was almost undetectable, that was the highest version of the work. Where if somebody, despite the hour long interview, despite the three or four hours I spent slaving over the perfect expression of the transcription, that that person looks at it and says, oh, that's me. That's what I said. And then the audience looks at it and says, oh, that's them. That's what they said. And so I realized it was artistically preferable for me to disappear to the point where it became very much part of my artistic creo that, you know, humans of New York is best the less of Brandon Stanton there is in it. And so I followed that for a long time in the direction of how I present the stories. Then as far as the using it to raise money and using stories to raise money, that I think became an outgrowth of that same creole. You know, humans of New York is best when its power is being utilized for something other than pointing back to me. And so I started looking for these opportunities when the storytelling. And I'm still looking at these opportunities. It's something I want to get back into more to kind of create these communities, create places where other people can become part of the story, where people can help resolve the story by contributing resources. And then most recently in Grand Central with the Dear New York art installation, where it was about encouraging people to create the work work themselves, as opposed to me being the person who does the interviewing and facilitating somebody expressing their own story to taking even a step further back is what I'm really looking forward at now, where instead of me trying to create this moment between me and another person, so much of my artistic thought now is going towards how do I create this moment between two people that are not me, that I can somehow teach, or I can somehow recreate this environment that I've experienced on the street 10,000 different times. So where somebody else, two other people can experience this same depth, the same arriving at a place of authenticity and the inherent transformation for both the person doing the interviewing and the person being interviewed that is involved in this process for as many people as possible.
- [54:14]
B
And that's become your brand. I mean, not being Brandon, not having your name more powerful than the humans
- [54:20]
A
in New York name, which is hard today. And it's causing me problems today because so much of social media has moved to being personality driven. If you look at what is really connecting on social media, it's the power of a personality. You know, the same person's space, you know, is being. So much of the social media algorithms right now are run off facial recognition. You stop and you watch an interview with one person. And no matter what podcast is on, you scroll down a little bit, you'll see that same person on a different podcast. So, you know, so much of distribution these days is moving away from the quality of your craft and moving towards your individual personality, which has always gone against the. The trend of my work. Then there's been many different points in my career like this. You know, it's something that I am trying to reconcile right now that the general trajectory of what I continue to think is most beautiful about my work. Leaning into that is creating a lot of headwinds to getting the work seen. So it's something that I'm currently navigating at the moment.
- [55:32]
B
And you're doing a great job. I mean, for as long as you've been doing it, it is so hard to do roughly the same thing. I mean, it's not like you're changing with trends. You're staying pretty rock solid on what you do.
- [55:44]
A
Right.
- [55:45]
B
And to still carry the weight and to have just an incredible exhibition in Grand Central. And for anybody who's outside the New York area, man, it's like coming from someone who lives here and to see something on that stature is impressive. I can't even imagine what it's like for people traveling here and for photographers who aren't from this city to really understand the magnitude of that. But you've still carried an impact, like you've said, through all these changes in. Even just in how the social media economy alone has completely transformed from when you started. Is that something that you struggle with, with staying relevant and staying at the top of your game? Because I think a lot of people would kind of think, oh, humans are nerd. He's good. He's. He's on a lifelong path, but you have to work at it.
- [56:33]
A
Then again, it's like one thing that I feel so blessed for is that I started before social media and that put me on such a firm foundation where I was always trying to evolve my work along a trajectory that I like it more, it's more interesting to me. And keeping my work on that trajectory allowed me to get bored with my work before the audience did, before the metrics told me that it wasn't working anymore. I would change it just because I was tired of doing it and I wanted to do something new that allowed humans of New York to go through three or four major evolutions that I think each time bought it another three or four years of relevance because it was a new offering every three or four years. You know, I think you're kind of handicapped these days in a way when you're social media native, because you're taught. I'm not even talking consciously, just subconsciously you are conditioned from such an early moment to immediately judge the quality of your work based on how much is distributed. I even hear people talking about these days, it's like, oh, the algorithm changes. It's a meritocracy now. The good stuff floats to the top. But that's not true. It's not a meritocracy that the quality stuff gets seen. It's the stuff that is quality based on extremely narrow definition of what fits into what is being measured, which is like quality equals how many people watch the first three seconds. Like, that's the definition of quality that you drop on and you say you're never going to guess what you're going to see in the next 60 seconds. It's going to blow your mind. But first, let me tell you about this unrelated thing to keep you watching. You know, it's not a meritocracy. On social media, there's always been, and they say it's an meritocracy, but what they're doing is they're changing human behavior. With every one of these algorithm changes, they are creating a mass change in the behavior of how people consume things and therefore the behavior of how people create things. And it's something that is very stultifying. And I think people are feeling this and feeling this crush. But you can say that, oh, if you didn't want the attention, then it wouldn't be a problem. But everybody needs attention. That's the thing. It's these platforms have a monopoly on human attention. And everybody needs attention. Babies need attention. It's the very first addiction coming from a former addict. The very first thing that people get addicted to is attention. It's adaptive. You need your parents attention if you are going to survive. It's a primordial need. Then if you become an artist, if you become a businessman, anybody needs attention to survive. And when you have platforms that have a monopoly over attention, that is a massive amount of power that's not discussed and it's not examined closely enough. Because every time they change the rules of what is required to get attention, they change the behavior of everybody who needs attention to survive. And I think that is why so many people, not only artists, but anybody who needs attention to make their way in the world to stand up on soapbox and say, hey, I've worked my ass off on creating something beautiful. Will you come to my event? Will you come see it? Anybody who needs that is having their behavior conditioned and controlled from the top by people who have monopoly over attention. And I think there is a lot of anguish that is unfocused and undefined these days based on that situation. And yes, you know, it's something that I have felt for the 15 years. There have always been kind of like these small changes, but now that everything's AI run and it's all hyper drive, it just feels increasingly. I don't want to go too far because again, it's just like nothing is black or white. You know, there's still a lot of value I get off these social media platforms. You know, they make me a better parent. It tends to give you more of what you want. And so if you're a disciplined person and you take time and you stop and you look at videos on how to be a better parent, how to be a better friend, how to be a better partner, then these social media platforms can help source things that are going to enrich your life. Life. However, if you are a person who maybe looks at things that are not great for you and maybe they encourage your addictions, maybe they encourage your insecurities, your envy, any sort of these things, then they are only increasing your trend towards being a person that you don't want to be. You know, I think the problem with these platforms is that they are completely agnostic and they do not care whether or not you're a better person tomorrow than you are yesterday. The only thing they care about is how long you look at the screen.
- [61:49]
B
Yes. And I think I remember reading something with you talking about that where it's like they've literally become ad spaces, it's become attention. They hold your attention to make money. And it's like people forget that these platforms are businesses. And I think we used to live under the cloud of, yeah, they lied to us.
- [62:07]
A
They came out and they said, we
- [62:08]
B
have one as a platform for creators
- [62:09]
A
and sharing about connecting the world. Connection was the word they kept using. We're about connecting. And like, that is such a lie, though. You heard Mark Zuckerberg say it on an interview recently, and it's just like he couldn't even get it out of his mouth. Like, yeah, I don't even think he believed it. And I believed it, you know, I believed it in the early days, you know, when it's like, oh, our platform exists to bring people closer together, you know, and to connect the world and to find common ground. And it's just like, I think it's remarkably transparent for anyone paying attention that the millions and millions of business and algorithmic decisions that are being made by these social platforms lead up to a pyramid and an apex where a single thing is being measured. And that's how long can we keep you staring at the screen and the architecture and the design and everything that comes out of that is based on that single metric. And if you're somebody who pays attention to things that you should be paying attention to, it can be helpful for you. If you're the other 95% of people who tend to, you know, pay attention to things that maybe aren't the best for them, it's not a good influence in your life. And it's just like it's okay to say that, yeah, all we care about is making the most money off ad revenues possible, which requires creating the content that's most likely likely to keep you staring at the screen instead of talking to your kids, staring at the screen instead of going outside for a walk and, like, working on your thing. Then, you know, be honest about that. Just don't say that we're all here to connect, because that stopped being true a long time ago inside your boardrooms and in your private conversations. So let's not tell the public that that's why these platforms still exist.
- [63:53]
B
Brenda, do you struggle? I know I. I struggle personally with the fact that a lot of my jobs. Job is online. A lot of my job is facilitated through social media. Being a parent, especially as your kids get older. My son is 8. They reach a point where they realize that you're online. They realize it, but yet they don't understand the nuance of I'm feeding the family, I'm keeping a roof over our head. But then I have to turn and you know, and limit your screen time and teach you that not everything goes online. Has that changed the way you work or has that really added a level of complexity to humans of New York versus Brandon the father?
- [64:33]
A
Great question. And I'm not good at it. Like, my wife would be completely rolling her eyes if she heard me talking about it because I'm the one in the family that is the poorest role model in that. But no, it's. And I think that is. Well, and for the same reasons, it's very easy to justify it. When I made Dear New York, I wanted Daring New York to be very much a book. And so, like, I did hundreds of stories that appeared first in that book. Compare that to my other books where they were just kind of anthologies and catalogs of the previous year of online work. And it was completely different creative process because I wasn't getting that immediate feedback or that immediate sculpting by the algorithm of what is valuable based on the quote Unquote, meritocracy that it has. I was just. Just having these conversations with people and storing them. It was almost back to, like, the early days of humans in New York. It was very satisfying. My screen time was lower than ever. You know, my mental health was better. That was more present than ever. But then, yeah, when I finally came back to social media and started posting with any sort of regularity, I was completely out of flow and condition with what's working. So, you know, there is an element that even scrolling, scrolling on Instagram is necessary to have a fluency in them and to have a fluency that says working. So, yeah, my personal phone addiction is harder to overcome because of that justification I can always give myself. Well, even if it's not work, it's work adjacent. And so, yeah, one of the major tensions of my life right now is that these devices and these screens that I think on a macro level are having a very negative effect on the general mental health and productivity. And so many different important metrics to which measure the value of human life are also the way that I reach people in ways that hopefully add to their lives and connect with them. And again, you know, that's where you can see Grand Central coming up. You know, what is Grand Central? You know, Grand Central was me taking a massive amount of the resources and money that I earned over the past 15 years of creating work online to create something that had to be visited in person to experience. It's just my belief that the only scarcity that's going to exist in art moving forward is going to be in real life. And so, you know, I don't think Grand Central was my answer to that, but it was a step in that direction of what of my work can translate into the real world? What of it can be experienced in person and not through the mediation of a screen. And I learned a lot of lessons, lessons that I hope to continue to apply along similar lines.
- [67:22]
B
Man, you read my mind. You knew right where my mind was going. I'm like, this is a perfect transition to Grand Central and even the books, because the books, it's tangible art. It gets you off a screen, right? You're seeing your images in print, you're reading stories. And I think just the psychological act of flipping a page and not scrolling is enough to disrupt the chemistry that they seize upon in doom. Scrolling and locking us into a device, right?
- [67:53]
A
The question being, what along those lines am I thinking about? To me, interactive art, and I think humans in New York is always, always been interactive because it's always involves me and another person. And I think the magic of it has been in that real life interaction. And so where I'm really thinking about now, the most beautiful part about Grand Central. And so for people who aren't aware, Dear New York was a two week immersive art installation in Grand Central. It wasn't pre publicized. It appeared on October 6th and all of Grand Central was completely transformed. All of the advertising was removed and replaced with portraits and stories of New Yorkers, including 50 foot projections in the main concourse. It was all encompassing. And there were some elements of that art installation. In one room, we had a art installation involving 600 schoolchildren who had interviewed and documented people in their community. And we took their work and we put it all in museum quality framing. And we created a exhibition where their work was mixed with about 10 to 12 established New York photographers, including Jamel Shabazz, who is a legendary street photographer. And they all had the exact same museum quality framing. And that room was so magical because throughout the two weeks, these 600 children would come in and they would see their work in this beautiful hallowed setting that they normally would would never have access to. Then there's the people in their community. They document it. Some of these kids honored their teachers, some of them honored crossing guards. They're coming in, they're seeing themselves honored in this hallowed place. And there was this magic about opening up the access and stakeholding to this Grand Central that would normally only be given to the Met or MoMA or people with institutional power to these normal people, that was so powerful to me. And seeing these crossing guards from the Bronx coming in with tears in their eyes because some child had taken their photo. And here it was in a $300 frame under beautiful studio lighting that was powerful to me. We had a 12 foot grand piano in the main terminal. Music had never been allowed in the main terminal before. We had it for two weeks, for eight hours a day, Juilliard students were playing that. But at night, for three hours every night, I opened it up to normal people, random New Yorkers coming and playing that $268,000 piano in one of the most beautiful rooms in the world. And every single person who sat down at that piano had their lives transformed that night. It was one of the most powerful experiences of their lives. And you were to ask me what are the two most special parts of that entire thing? It was those moments. It was the mixture between the ordinary, which is not a good word, but the person who might be unconnected, unanointed by institutions having the ability to have their voice, their vision, their lived experience expressed in a framing in a place that is normally only reserved for the elite, culturally anointed artists of our world. And generation like that was so powerful. And I want to make more art like that, which gives ordinary people stakes and access to extremely hallowed places and extremely hallowed experiences.
- [71:41]
B
And make no mistake, it was a complete labyrinth of. Of bureaucracy for you.
- [71:48]
A
Yes.
- [71:49]
B
To go through every step of the way. Right. I mean, this wasn't just something. I think a lot of people, it's easy to say, oh, he's humans in New York, they just opened everything up and rolled out the red carpet. Now it's.
- [71:58]
A
Yeah. And I appreciate you recognizing that.
- [72:01]
B
You probably want to pull your hair out every step.
- [72:03]
A
One day, people will realize how much of a Mount Everest this was to climb. But, yes, a lot of things happened in Grand Central that had never happened before. And every single thing needed the approval of four different agencies. And none of them worked together. So all of them were immune to the influence of the other. And each one of them had its own veto power. Mta, Metro North Out Front, which was the corporate partner that controlled all the advertising, and then the State Historical Protection Office. And each one of them had different incentives. For example, the State Historical Preservation Office just cared about nothing but preserving the integrity of Grand Central and not changing its texture, which was exactly what I was trying to do. I wanted to completely change the texture of Grand Central. And I had a state agency whose stated mandate was to keep the texture, Grand Central, from being changed. But again, it's just like, ultimately, all of these organizations and all of these bureaucracies are filled with people. And what was so heartwarming about the whole experience is that in the. The process, as it wound its way through these layers of approvals, eventually these requests always ended up on the desk of a person, a human being, who looked at it and said, you know, we've never really done something like this before, but we think this is beautiful. We think this is good for the city of New York. So we're going to hold our breath and say yes. And that happened about a thousand times. And because a thousand different people held their breath and said yes, we ended up with something that was, I like to believe, quite impressive and quite novel.
- [73:36]
B
Look, as a third party and someone who passes through there all the time, it is. My hair is standing up on my arms right now for you. It was that. I don't even think impressive does it justice. It was. It Was awe inspiring. It literally stopped you in your tracks multiple times. I mean, you couldn't just walk through Grand Central. And I think as a New Yorker, Grand Central is one of those places where it's like, all right, right. It's bob and weave, dodge the people taking pictures on the platforms. And it was just completely enamoring, I think is the only word that'll kind of come close to even describing it. And just the scale and knowing, I mean, that adds a level to it. Knowing how damn hard it is, it's near impossible to get in a place like that. And you're dealing with multiple agencies, multiple organizations. This one's going to contradict this one. One. This one. Well, we need approval from them to do this, and it's a headache. Which leads me to how big is your team right now? And. And what is your, you know, your everyday working team? And then to do something on this scale, what does the team look like?
- [74:46]
A
I think for 15 years, it's very much been me. You know, humans of New York. I did a video series for about three years. It involved a cinematographer, and then once we went into production, we had editors and things. But that was a very containerized period of my life. For the other 15 years, it's just a me and my camera. I was writing myself. Nobody else had passwords to my social media. I did have a. A part time assistant that I worked with in the Philippines. I met her when I was in the Philippines for six months working on a documentary. But she ended up moving on because I didn't even have an opportunity work together. So it was just very much. This past 15 years, humans in New York has been just me, which made Grand Central so much of an ice bath for me because I went from working alone for 15 years to having this team of over 100 people that I needed to perform and care as much as I did for this thing to really be what it needed to be. And I think that's where the art of management comes in, which I slowly learned over those six months, just through the process of doing a lot of things wrong. But, you know, eventually there's enough cohesion among these 100 different moving parts to create something beautiful that worked. So Grand Central was my first experience of, you know, bringing together a massive amount of stakeholders into a singular vision with all those. The frustrations, headaches, but also magic that comes from that. Their realization that, yeah, there are people who are a lot better than you at a lot of different things, and if you just give them some leash and Some autonomy. Your creation will turn into things that are good in ways that you could not even imagine. Because I've always been able to create things that are good in ways that I can imagine. And I think one of the beautiful, beautiful things about working with really talented collaborators is that you begin creating things that are good in ways that you could not even imagine. I think that's what Grand Central was.
- [76:54]
B
Does that take it and move the goalpost for you? It's like, if I can accomplish this, I mean, there's really nothing I can do from here. Does it help push you further? Are these the things that drive you forward?
- [77:05]
A
Yeah, I think so. You know, I think now that I've done this again, because I'm always looking to create work that's interesting to me. And I think when you set a new high watermark in your own valuation of your own work, by necessity, you have to get more inventive, you have to get more innovative, you have to get more novel and outside the box to create something that you personally will view as a new high watermark. And so I think, think the bigger projects that you tackle is constantly pushing you to farther and farther reaches. One of the takeaways and one of the things that I practiced, you know, my entire career is you always need to tackle things that you aren't ready for. Like, the correct project for you to be doing is the one that you're not quite ready to do, that you're not quite ready to do, and also that you're not quite sure what it's going to be. You have to bite off something that's big enough that it requires you to become somebody different, and it requires becoming something different along the way for it to land. Because those are the projects that induce growth. I think that's what Grand Central was. You know, it all came together in six months. So that was about eight months ago. Like, eight months ago. I was not a person who could organize a two week immersive art installation taking over the entirety of Grand Central Station. I had to become that person, and the conceptualization of it had to become what it needed to be along the way. And it was scary as hell, and it was stressful as hell. Like, I mean, I'm an established artist. I've got four number one New York Times best selling books. Like, there were times, like, in Grand Central, like, I got so freaking shaky. Like, I couldn't even work. Like, I would just. I'd be, like, paralyzed with fear because I was, like spending, like, so much money. I had no Idea things, anything was going to work. I had no idea if anybody was going to care about it or come see it. Even with all the success that I've had and the track record I've had of creating things that have been well received, like, there are periods where I was overcome by so much uncertainty and insecurity and doubt and fear that I was, like, literally paralyzed. Like, I just have to sit down for a little while. But it's just like putting yourself in those situations that force growth, growth and force evolution along the path. It's doing the safe thing, doing the thing. The algorithm rewards doing the things that's working for other people. You know, it might give you some spurts of dopamine, but it's just like, that's not what's going to grow you as an artist or keep you on a path that's just a hamster on a wheel.
- [79:47]
B
Thank God someone out here gets it. It's like it's deeper than social media. But I want to go back to that struggle. And what grounds you, man? I mean, you. You've spent your entire career doing this, really honing in on the struggles, and it's always been about, you know, helping other people connect to random strangers. And really, it's like you've. You've taken yourself out of the equation. It's like you're taking a random stranger, connecting to them, but making it about them, and then it's released out into the ether for other strangers to connect through this stranger. So it's really. You've done a great job at keeping yourself out of that equation. But how do you take care of you? How do you keep yourself grounded? How do you, in the face of your own struggles, get up, put your shoes on every day and go do it? When times are hard, when you are facing such struggles, such as the Grand Central installation.
- [80:43]
A
Yeah. You know, and again, everything is about seasons. And, you know, I've got three young kids now, and so, yeah, so that is my company. You know, one thing I constantly check in and I asked this question of everybody I interview is, I love this question. How do you keep score with yourself? And I think it's such a clarifying question, not just to ask yourself once, but to check in with yourself every six months. It's like, how am I measuring right now whether I'm living the life that I'm supposed to be living? You know, I think for some people, it's just money. For some people, it's status. For some people, you know, again, it's like, I'VE always tried oriented in things like impact, you know, the quality of my work and it's not going to be the same answer for you. And I think when you say like how you keep your score with yourself, it's just life is so full of choices and when you have a choice between two different paths that are equal in every single way, you are going to choose the path that has more of what. That's how you answer that question. So right now that question's probably harder for me to answer than ever before because it was always just about art and creating the most beautiful art and how do I create the most beautiful, impactful foot trainer of the world, I guess. But yeah, now I've got three kids that just very, very, very much need my attention and that's not working anymore. That, that, that you know, I'm going to focus. So you know, and like the thing, the energy it takes to do something like Grand Central, like the consumption just the, oh, your mind has to be on it all of the time and it's just like, and, and like a hundred different areas of it and you know that, that kind of just complete consumption, the single thing is not conducive to you know, raising three well adjusted people who feel like they're the center of the world, of somebody's world and their needs grow and they get more complex as they grow. So yeah, I'm entering once again another season of change where I'm going to have to really examine that question of how I'm keeping score with myself. I managed to cut everything out of my life except for work and my family. You know what I mean? I'm not a good friend. I don't go, I don't have boys nights, I don't go out drinking, I don't go out. Yeah, it's like I don't have much of a social life because I wanted to be a good father and I wanted to be a good artist and I knew that I had enough energy to do both things really well but like nothing else. And so now it's even getting to the point where even that I'm going to have to dial down a little bit on my consumption with my work and my art in order to dial up at least in this season wise, the amount of attention and bandwidth that I can give to my kids growing needs because I was able to balance and sit pretty dang well up until now. But yeah, it's getting tougher and tougher and tougher. But it's a beautiful thing. Life gets tougher yeah, it's a beautiful choice to make. You know what I mean? It's like, I just think life is full of these choices and the way to live a happy and fulfilled life is to focus on the beauty and the benefits inherent in each path that you choose and not obsess over the taxes. For example, I see a lot of unhappy parents who obsess over the freedom that they lost. You know what I mean? Whereas in. If you're single, some people might obsess over the lack of companionship or their loneliness, when in reality, being single offers you a lot of freedom. And, you know, being parent, despite constricting your freedom, you have this kind of. Of deep companionship. So, you know, every path through life is going to have its beauty and its benefits. And I think, you know, so much about being a balanced and happy person is being somebody who has gratitude for the beauty that each path brings into your life and not be somebody who ruinates and obsesses over the tax that you're paying for those benefits.
- [85:09]
B
Such a good outlook. And what is in line with your next choices? What is in the pipeline? Is there anything. Are you kind of taking a break after Grand Central, or are you already.
- [85:20]
A
Well, I just, to be absolutely honest, like, for the first time in my life, I mean, Grand Central was a financial trauma for me. You know, I just started going down it on just this artistic vision that I just got absolutely locked into that I could. I had the ability and the reputation in a unique place to do something very singular in this very iconic space. And I started going down that path. And like, the invoices just kept piling up and piling up and piling up. But the obsessive artist and could not say no because I just. I had to do it right. There was a right way to do it. It wasn't about budget. It was just about. There's a correct way to completely take over Grand Central. And I'm already so far down the path, I just have to do it correctly. And so, you know, at the end of that, for the first time, you know, I'm just like, oh, man. Like, I. Now, after focusing on my work for some years, I got three kids. I have to find some sources of income. So I've been putting more effort and thought into that the past few months. As you read in my bio. You know, one thing that I've started doing, which I'm actually loving, and I'm actually kind of really locked into this, I've been going to certain companies and I'll Take like, you know, 30 or 40 of their top managers, and I will teach them to interview each other, like, interview them in the. Like, the humans of New York style. Then I'll tear them off. And there's been these very kind of transformative, beautiful interventions as a result of this. It is producing an income for me, but it's. I'm actually also very interested in it because it's hard to me, whether it's 30 random people or 30 people who happen to work for a company, creating this framework for people to have these deep connections with each other is fascinating to me. So I'm doing a lot of that now somewhat in corporate environments again, as I try to rebuild my resources so that I can go back to focusing completely on art. But it also just happens to align with what I'm thinking about, where I want to go the most in the future, which is as opposed to me sitting down in front of another person. I think the next chapter and the next evolution and the next stage of my work is going to be turning people towards each other and then creating a platform and a stage for these beautiful moments to happen independent of me and my involvement. That's what excites me most now.
- [87:45]
B
I love that. And with everything you've done already in that realm, I think it's safe to say we're in good hands. It was great to get a look inside your mind and to know what makes you tick and how you view these technologies and everything that's out there at our disposal to use for either good or bad. And this was just a really, really, really fun, easy, interesting conversation. Brandon, I think for the first time in me interviewing somebody, I don't have to ask. So where can we find out more about your work? I think we all know where to find it. No. So I want to thank you for your time and really just thank you. Everything you've done. Thank you. I mean, even beyond sitting here for this interview, it's. Everything you've done over the past 15 years has really transformed the way humanity sees each other. And I think that's a beautiful thing that can't really be quantified.
- [88:40]
A
I'm so kind of you to say thank you. And thank you also to Jill for being so persistent and getting me. Jill showed up. She emailed me a couple times. It was during Grand Central. And so I first, like, I emailed. It was like, yeah, I'd to love, love to do it. And then I just got completely small and Jill showed up at my book signing.
- [88:58]
B
I love it.
- [88:59]
A
I know, I respect that so much. And she showed off. I was like, okay. I gave her my cell phone number, which I never do. I said, okay, Jill, I got some major cred from my boss for doing that. Yeah, no, it was you. You gotta respect when somebody cares enough, they're willing to put in that much effort. So I was like, okay, absolutely, Joe, go. We'll do it on Christmas Eve. Here you go. Here's my. Here's my cell phone number. We'll do it on Christmas Eve.
- [89:25]
B
It's a Christmas miracle.
- [89:26]
A
Hey, I was corresponding with everybody saying, yeah, maybe there will be a Christmas miracle. There you go.
- [89:33]
B
She's over here at the office Googling. Where does Brandon Stanton drink his coffee every morning? Where do I find him? How do I run into him? What are his most interviewed locations?
- [89:43]
A
I love it. And it resulted in this conversation, which. Which was a wonderful conversation. So thank you, Derek.
- [89:48]
B
Thank you. I mean, again, a Christmas miracle came through. But a huge thank you to you, Brandon, for sitting down with us and really opening up your entire. Not just your body of work, but your approach to everything. So this was really great. Can't thank you enough to all of our listeners out there. We hope you guys enjoyed this as much as we do. Thank you for joining us today. If you are a fan of the show but are not yet yet a subscriber, head on over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, B&H's YouTube channel, or wherever you get your podcasts and click subscribe. You can also find us on the Explorer blog where we post photos from our guests along with our show notes. I'm your host, Derek Fosbender. Joe Waterman is our creative producer, our persistent creative producer. Episodes are recorded, mixed and edited by technical producer Mike Weinstein. And our very, very, very high. The executive producer is Richard Stevens. On behalf of us all, thank you so much for tuning in today.
- [90:47]
A
Thanks to Leica for sponsoring this week's episode.