Humans of New York

Product Description

Based on the blog with more than four million loyal fans, a beautiful, heartfelt, funny, and inspiring collection of photographs and stories capturing the spirit of a city

Now an instant #1 New York Times bestseller, Humans of New York began in the summer of 2010, when photographer Brandon Stanton set out to create a photographic census of New York City. Armed with his camera, he began crisscrossing the city, covering thousands of miles on foot, all in an attempt to capture New Yorkers and their stories. The result of these efforts was a vibrant blog he called "Humans of New York," in which his photos were featured alongside quotes and anecdotes.

The blog has steadily grown, now boasting millions of devoted followers. Humans of New York is the book inspired by the blog. With four hundred color photos, including exclusive portraits and all-new stories, Humans of New York is a stunning collection of images that showcases the outsized personalities of New York.

Surprising and moving, printed in a beautiful full-color, hardbound edition, Humans of New York is a celebration of individuality and a tribute to the spirit of the city.

With 400 full-color photos and a distinctive vellum jacket

Features

• Used Book in Good Condition

Top Reviews

HONY: Brandon Stanton's photographic tribute to his adopted city
by John Williamson (5 out of 5 stars)
January 2, 2014

New York City is many special things to different people. For some it's museums, for others the New York Public Library. For some it's performances at Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Apollo Theater or any number of Broadway plays and musicals. For others it is the world-famous landmarks: Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building or thousands of other places, too many to mention here.

But New York City is really about one other thing: people.

Photographer Brandon Stanton has captured this in Humans of New York
, his debut book... and it has skyrocketed on the various book charts since its publication in October 2013, and for good reason. Based on his HONY blog, which now has over two million followers and fans, this book is a visual delight of about 400 photos of the people that he has encountered in his travels across the five boroughs that make up New York City. His people images make a gorgeous, sometimes funny, truly genuine, and often moving compilation of photos that capture the spirit of the city through its diverse people in often inspiring ways.

Brandon Stanton did not start his career with the goal of becoming a photographer, as he explains in the introduction of this book. He noted that while working as a bond trader in Chicago, he spent his weekends with a camera that he had acquired in 2010, and that photography "felt like a treasure hunt." After losing his job as a trader, he traveled to various American cities, but his first impressions of NYC were unforgettable, as he notes in the intro:
"I remember the moment my bus emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel and I saw the city for the first time. The sidewalks were covered with people. The buildings were impressive, but what struck me most were the people. There were tons of them. And they all seemed to be in a hurry. That night, I created a photo album for my New York photos. I called it `People of New York.'"

From that simple beginning, the rest became photographic history; from his early attempts at a Web page, he discovered social media in the form of Facebook and Tumbler. Fans of his images reacted, and soon became regular followers. At first it was hundreds, then thousands, and zooming forwards to today, his Facebook page has over two million loyal followers, and hundreds commenting on his images daily, with many of those sharing his people photos to their own pages. Each of these is a capsule of a moment in time.

On these pages we see everyday people as encountered by many of us on the New York streets; subway images, people in Central Park, in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, by the Strand Book Store in Downtown Manhattan, at the Brooklyn Museum and at Manhattan's iconic Metropolitan Museum of Art. We see a young well-dressed girl in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, a well-dressed older woman at the Waldorf-Astoria, people carrying boxes of pizza as gifts for the firefighters (the owner refused payment), people at Union Square on 14th Street, and a Marine recruiter in uniform on the street in Downtown Manhattan. Some are camera shy, while others are striking a pose.

And there are some that stand out, strikingly so. We see the full-page view of the model in her black and white striped evening gown at Lincoln Center, the chess players at Washington Square Park, people with their pets, the Sikh gentleman whose gentle smile is hidden behind his iconic mustache and beard, and the two page image of two ballet students captured in a lunchtime pose, standing in front of a steam grate in Tribeca. It is this same image that has served as the iconic avatar on HONY's Facebook page.

There are people at play, at work, sleeping on benches in parks, dancing, eating, kissing, hugging, and frolicking in the water gushing from fire hydrants. We find people of all ethnic backgrounds, and of all ages, from teenagers to folks in their nineties, to children. There are many superb images of children here, and they must captivate Stanton, as it is said that he will be publishing a children's book, "Little Humans" in 2014.

There are captions, though they are limited and to the point. Maybe because Stanton is upbeat and not condescending, so his captions never stereotype, even when he photographs people that close-minded individuals might think of as "sketchy" or strange. His book radiates his own natural curiosity, along with diversity, appreciation and respect for the people that he photographs. For open-minded people watchers, this book is a treasure.

It's difficult to classify this as a traditional coffee table photo book, if just by size alone. My copy is 304-page hardcover first edition printed in the U.S. and published by St. Martin's Press on October 15th, 2013. It measures 9.2 x 7.3 x 1 inches, which is hardly a coffee table book like another favorite, The New York Times Magazine Photographs by Kathleen Ryan. That Aperture edition measures 12.2 x 10.5 x 1.8 inches, a good bit larger.

On a personal basis, I rank Brandon Stanton's book right up there with Robert Frank's The Americans
, a powerful book in post-WWII American photography. First published in 1959, his black and white photos were remarkable for their distanced view of both high and low strata of American society of the time. In contrast to Stanton's book, there is an element of sadness, even despair, in some of the images, but there is joy as well.

To many, New Yorkers are standoffish, cold and impersonal. For those of us who have spent time on the streets here, this is generally not so, and as a relative newcomer to the city, Brandon Stanton has proven that to be a myth. I am reminded of this quote that was written down when it was passed on by a friend:
"My favorite thing about New York is the people, because I think they're misunderstood. I don't think people realize how kind New York people are."
~ Bill Murray, Moviefone interview, April 27th, 2010

What makes Brandon Stanton's Humans of New York so different is that it is not about high-profile celebrities. It features people who aren't normally documented, who one might find anywhere on the New York streets if one just looks. It's a book that I have already gifted to some special friends, ones who also enjoy real people in everyday settings. It's not just a personal favorite, but one that may well go down in books of NYC street photography as a landmark chronicle of this era. Time will tell.

JW * 1/2/2014
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90% photos 1% words, rest are left to your imagination!
by LeshiW (5 out of 5 stars)
December 1, 2018

Very nice cover, content, format and everything. I'm a follower of the HONY facebook page so the only thing I noticed was different was that most of the phographs in the book only has a few words caption, nothing as elaborated as the FB contents. They don't tell whole stories, the details are left to your own imagination. Captivating read regardless. Good for someone who enjoy photos more than words.
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This book is AMAZING!
by P.S (5 out of 5 stars)
August 17, 2014

(First of all, I love Amazon prime. I ordered this book one night and it was delivered the very next morning!)

I came across Humans of New York on Facebook, and soon looked forward every day to each new post and photo. I love the page so much, I was so excited to see there was a book as well! I ordered it right away and when it came I sat down (intending to just look over a few pages since I had a lot to do that day) and before I knew it two hours had passed and I had read the entire book! I literally could not put it down.

It will make you laugh, cry, and pick your jaw off the floor. It makes you think of people in a way you haven't in a long time, to realize that each and every stranger you pass has a story. Hopes, dream, heartbreaks and triumphs. We too often get stuck in our own little world, and forget that we are not the only ones going through stuff. This book reminds you of that, and it does it beautifully with gorgeous text and stunning photography.

The cover is beautiful, it is PERFECT to display as a coffee table book that will capture everyone who picks it up. I can't wait for Brandon Stanton to publish more books, I am going to buy every one. Very highly recommend, one of the best books I've ever bought.
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Bala and Other HONY
by Jayne P. Bowers (5 out of 5 stars)
February 22, 2014

I'm so glad that Brandon Stanton left his job as a bonds trader and picked up a camera. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to look at the amazing pictures in his book, The Humans of New York. I love this book! The first time around I looked at the pictures, the second time around I read most of the words that accompanied the photos, and the third time around I did both. Now in addition to looking at their photographs, I'm thinking about the people that Brandon Stanton captured through his camera lens.

There are too many "models" to mention, so I'm spotlighting three that I especially like. (1) There's the elderly lady with soft silver hair and a beautiful smile whose caption says, "Every time I force myself to go outside, something wonderful happens." Great advice! (2) And I love the red shirted man named Bala. He's lying on his side in his picture, his long gray beard and hair framing his face. The man's name is Lawrence, and his deceased wife's name was Barbara. He called her Ba, and she called him La. After her death, he changed his name to Bala. (3) And then there's Gac Filipaj, a refugee from Yugoslavia who's decked out in his graduation regalia for his photograph. After 12 years of working as a janitor at Columbia University until 11:00 p.m. each night, he earned a classics degree.

If you love pictures and the stories they tell, you'll relish this book. After looking at it, you'll know for certain that there are no uninteresting people and that Stanton is a gifted photographer who's found his niche.
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Wonderful photographs that capture the soul of New York
by Expressed Reviews (5 out of 5 stars)
February 3, 2014

This is a fantastic book that captures the soul of New York City in photographs. Brandon Stanton manages to portray in photographs what many writers have tried to do in prose. Through his photographs, you really get a sense of the diversity of personalities living in this incredibly interesting city. The pictures range from the normal to the wildly eccentric and cover a very wide range of emotions. The pictures truly do tell a story of the humans of New York. In addition to the photographs, there are lots of captions & very short stories about many of the people highlighted in the book. The only thing that I would recommend is to purchase the print version, as the Kindle version has some annoying problems. I purchased it for use on my iPad, but found that many of the captions failed to display properly, and many of the pages failed to turn when I tapped the screen. This is not a reflection of the book, but rather the format. The book itself deserves a high 5 stars.
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Not My Mother's New York
by Terry Baker Mulligan (5 out of 5 stars)
January 16, 2014

How often can you find a book with 400-plus gorgeous photos that's reasonably priced, not awkwardly sized or noticeably heavy to pick up?

That's what I got when I bought Humans of New York, which I think is the most exciting and one of the best photography books I've ever seen. I'm not a connoisseur, but I do love photography books and have a cherished, though modest collection that I started acquiring in the 1970s with my first one, The Family of Man.

Photographer Brandon Stanton captures much that is right about New York: the posturing, the beautiful women, kids being kids, fragile senior citizens, hipsters, hairstyles, fashions, kooky antics, faces and especially the smiles. The collection looks like it took a year or more of pounding sidewalks to find worthy material but remarkably, Humans of New York was a 2010 summer project.

His book isn't laden with excess explanation and verbiage. When Stanton labels a photo, he gets it just right with a few words, or he let's the subject explain him or herself, such as the pretty girl with an attitude and fabulous hair, who says: "I'm going to let you take my photo because you seem like a genuine person. But just so you know -- I don't normally let people steal my swag."

Most of the color photos evoke a sense of joy, but when Stanton flirts with the seamy side of New York life, you still feel the humanity. I will never again gaze upon a manic grin, or an elderly man wearing a fairy outfit or hear some crazy talk, without cutting that person a lot of slack. Sugar Hill: Where The Sun Rose Over Harlem
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love etc that we all experience
by Junglebird (5 out of 5 stars)
April 25, 2017

Brandon Stanton and the HONY community are lovely. (Follow on social media and check them out!) The stories are interesting and thought provoking. It opens your eyes to the struggles, joys, pain, love etc that we all experience, no matter what age or walk of life. The pictures are also very well done.
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brilliantly executed book by an amazing protographer
by K. Drabin-Gray (5 out of 5 stars)
January 2, 2014

This book is amazing. I was born and raised in NYC, lived there until my mid twenties and this book perfectly encapsulates everything that is awesome about NYC. These pictures take a look at homeless people, aspiring artist, kids on the street, street performers, obviously upper-class people, artists, drag queens, old men and women enjoying a cup of coffee, you name it. And Brandon Stanton captures these things at their most poignant, funny, sad, happy, interesting and amazing moments. It's really a seriously amazing coffee table book or something to leaf through now and again. No, I don't know Brandon, but have become familiar with him since I've been following his HONY blog since it began, or just about. He's a great guy that has put Harlem kids through summer YMCA programs with money he raised from his pictures, he gave a kid a week of horseback riding summer camp after taking his picture selling "horse stuff" by getting us all to donate a buck or two to his kickstarter campaign, and he's obviously an all around amazing guy. Buy the book! You won't be disappointed!
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Great gift book
by Bruce Wayne (5 out of 5 stars)
May 2, 2018

I purchased this book as a gift for my grandmother, who has everything and is thus difficult to shop for. I enjoyed flipping through it, and she was excited to have it. She really enjoys learning about other people and I thought it would make an interesting book to place on the bar as a coffee-table type book. It's a little smaller than I expected, which is fine for her.
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Wonderfully poignant & beautiful
by Beanaford (5 out of 5 stars)
October 17, 2013

Like thousands of others, i chanced on HONY's Facebook page thanks to a photo shared by a friend. I've been an avid follower ever since. If I ever miss a couple of days, i'd scroll back and go through all the photos, making sure to read the captions, which somehow are so appropriate, but yet so concise.

Though i'm not usually the type to pre-order pretty much anything, i did pre-order this gem. Got it last night and spent all of this morning, unboxing it, and then flipping through, page by page over a cup of coffee. The satisfaction and pleasure that comes from scrolling through a Facebook page, was not lost in the creation of this beautiful book. From cover to cover, and everything in between, portraits of New York's uniqueness and oneness, in photos, many which i'd never seen before, are highlighted in full, vibrant color, with the key quotes that made HONY so uniquely delightful. I giggled, and felt a bit teary, and ultimately finished the book, feeling bizarrely happy.

One of my favorite mornings of recent memory.

This man inspired a global movement. Check out Humans of Karachi, Humans of Paris, etc. etc., and you'll see so many who have been inspired by Brandon Stanton. For good reason.

He makes you feel the glow of New York.

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