The other day, my mother introduced me to a page on Facebook called “Humans of New York” (HONY). Scrolling through I found pictures of ordinary people, accompanied with captions beneath. These captions ranged from few words, quotes, dialogues to stories. The captions were cleverly written, most of them very heart warming to the audience. With further research I found out this project was directed by a man named Brandon Stanton. He originally intended to “construct a photographic census of New York City” but along the way the pictures and stories he collected developed into a blog that introduced “strangers of New York” to the global community. This became a phenomenon as he shared these to social media networks, where he established his official website as a “tumblog” on his tumblr page and has gained over 1.7million “likes” on his Facebook page. His success continues with his publication of his photo-book, Humans of New York.

I found these to be interesting research site in the framework of autobiographical studies. The pictures themselves were often average people; people who you would normally walk past a street without a thought, without any acknowledgement of their name or story, what Stanton refers to as “strangers”. They are simply anonymous figures, almost just like visual representations of statistics–they are simply significant for their existence and do not have much value to them. However when Stanton adds a caption/quote describing the unfamiliar face, it becomes a life story, gives character and personality to the visual statistic of a human of New York.

Stanton is clever in the choice of the stories and anecdotes that he attaches to the pictures. He specifically choses what would make the audience, mainly New Yorkers, feel related to this unidentified person mentally and physically. When New Yorkers see the familiar background of their community in the pictures with the people, they feel connected to the person in the sense that they are being introduced to someone who lives within the periphery of the reader’s daily activities and routines. The blurbs accompanied with the picture are often in the theme of conflict of the individual. Thus through HONY, Stanton introduces strangers’ problems, conveying the idea that everyone has problems and all of them are complex and reinforces the maxim that “you are not alone”.

While exploring the tumblr home page, I discovered a tab which posted pictures Stanton expanded his HONY project in the completely contrasting country, “IRAN”. He applied the same techniques he used for the Western residents of New York to the dissimilar Muslim nation as the anecdotes accompanied with the pictures of Persians created an interesting foil against the citizens of New York. Stanton made it seem as the Persians had the same sort of problems as the Western audience, but at the same time made it clear that they had different limitations as represented through the pictures, especially made clear in the images of women, who all wore hijabs.

Stanton’s publication of his book increased the publicity of his works by transferring the virtual world to the real world book stores. However his publication of his book raises the reoccurring ethical uncertainty in the commodification of people’s life narratives. It seems as though he is primarily profiting from the success of his book as it does not mention anywhere where the profits are going towards. Does Stanton have the right to profit off other’s stories and images of random people? Personally, although it does slightly disappoint me that the profits are not going to a charity, I think Stanton should be allowed to profit from the book as he has gotten prior consent (I assume) from the subject to share their picture and stories to others. In addition, perhaps it is anticipated by the subject as well to have Stanton, one with great influence on the virtual community, to share their story to the greater community. Furthermore, it is Stanton’s intelligence and skill, which has enhanced the ordinary pictures and stories of unknown faces of New York, thus it should be recognized as a form of artwork he should be recognized for.