Brandon Stanton: From college dropout to Humans of New York

DENTON – On a busy afternoon in New York City, two young boys sit with their mothers in a subway train.

A man in his 20s, recently fired from a job as a bond trader, stands nearby. The subway jerks and the man catches something striking- the two boys look upwards at the same time, with the same expression on their faces. It is an ordinary moment. The man instantly pulls out his camera and presses the shutter button.

When Brandon Stanton, creator of Humans of New York, shared this story with the audience of around 2,700 at the UNT Coliseum, he described the photo he took that day in 2010 as an awakening. It was the first photo he had taken of people and it got zero likes when he posted it on Facebook. But the picture still remains an achievement for Stanton because he was able to find something extraordinary in the ordinary.

“I had a sense of pride and happiness when I took that photo,” Stanton told the audience. “And it had nothing to with the focus, the composition, the white balance or any of the technical aspects that I hadn’t mastered yet. It was all because I got over my fear of strangers.”

It was in that moment that Stanton realized what he wanted to do for the rest of his life- take photographs of strangers. And today, Stanton has become the best at doing just that, with Humans of New York, a project that covers the stories of thousands of people, comprising two No. 1 New York Times bestselling books and millions of fans all over the world.

  “We knew [Stanton] would be an amazing person to have here,” UNT graduate student and member of the UNT Fine Arts Series committee Dallas Guill said.

Guill’s committee was in charge of planning Humans of New York: An Evening With Brandon Stanton event.

“It’s not just that his photography or his work is inspiring- look around at the people walking through this campus everyday,” he said. “These students can really relate to what this guy has to say.”

Stanton spent the first portion of the evening talking about the life he had before he met and photographed thousands of strangers- it was not a life he was happy with. He flunked out of the University of Georgia and lived in his grandparents’ basement while attending community college. When he finally managed to improve his grades, he moved to Chicago for a job in bond trading.

 “I was obsessed,” Stanton said. “All I could think about was keeping this job, so terrified of losing the job. My job was consuming so much of my mind till the point that I would be sitting in the front row of a concert thinking about how markets would be doing Monday morning. And the day that I got fired, it was surprisingly a great day.”

That was the day Stanton took a walk and asked himself, ‘What do I want to do with my life?’ The answer came swiftly to him- photography. It was a life-changing moment and one that the college students present in the audience could easily relate to, with many now puzzling at similar crossroads themselves.

 “I was studying to be a market analyst,” UNT junior Zuleima Melendez said. “I didn’t see myself doing it for a long time. Then I looked into advertising- because I used to be in yearbook and I liked its marketing aspect. But I was recently at the orientation at the School of Journalism for advertising, and I finally figured out that this is where I’m supposed to be.”

Thorne Anderson, a photojournalism associate professor at UNT’s Mayborn School of Journalism, was able to personally relate with Stanton’s experience in photography. But he thinks there is much more to appreciate than just the quality of photography in each individual picture of ‘Humans of New York’.

“It’s the context of the project in its entirety- that’s where the meaning comes from,” Anderson said. “Because you can see women, and men, and Muslims, and Christians and atheists, and people with high fashion and people with low fashion. It’s a big diversity and it just reminds you of all the different ways that we can be human.”

Before Stanton was able to travel around the world and take pictures of Middle Eastern refugees or inspire millions of people with his work, he was just another broke guy trying to make it big in New York City. His friends dismissed his ideas as nothing and his parents thought he would just go back to smoking in his room.

For Celeste Garcia, a freshman and broadcast journalism major at UNT, his perseverance despite having nothing was inspiring.

“I know when I start as a journalist I’m going to have a hard time too, because I’ll be making the bare minimum,” Garcia said. “But it’s OK if I only eat once a day- because I’ll be living through journalism. I don’t think it’s going to discourage me. If I give up halfway through I’m never going to reach Humans of New York status.”

  In the Q&A session at the end of the event, Stanton announced that he is working on a television show based on ‘Humans of New York’, which may be released in a few years. Stanton plans for each episode to feature a documentary of a different person’s life.

“He’s willing to put in so much effort for making the footage of a TV show that’s only going to be seen years from now,” Garcia said. “That just shows you his passion for storytelling- I think I share that same passion. I mean his work was part of the reason I even chose to go into journalism. So if he can make a living off of storytelling, why can’t I?”