A photography Census
I began Humans of New York in the summer of 2010 as a photography project. My initial aim was to take ten thousand photos of random New Yorkers and plot these photos on a map of the city. I wanted to see if I could make a living as an artist. That was the whole plan. Instagram did not yet exist. At the time Facebook was only a platform to share photos with your closest friends. I put my hopes in creating a popular enough ‘blog’ that I’d be able to sell prints of my work.
In the course of collecting these portraits, I naturally began having short conversations with the people I photographed. After several months I began to experiment with adding small quotes to the portraits. Before long these conversations became the focal point of the work itself. Social media was just beginning to take off at this time, and Humans of New York began to rapidly explode in popularity as a source of real, honest, and often surprising conversations with random people on the streets of New York City. It quickly became, in the words of New York Magazine, ‘the biggest thing on the internet.” In 2013 the first book was released: Humans of New York, and instantly became a #1 NYT bestseller. My life, to say the least, was wildly changed.
From Portraits To Interviews
Going Deeper
Over the next couple years, the conversations with my subjects grew longer and longer. The small quotes grew into longer stories: sometimes funny, sometimes philosophical, sometimes tragic. The second book Humans of New York Stories was released in 2015 to highlight these longer stories. During this time the work expanded to include both high society events like the Met Gala, as well as extensive series on marginalized groups such as refugees and federal inmates. In 2015 I was invited to The White House by the Obama administration, becoming the first social media creator to photograph and interview a president in the Oval Office.
An International Project
Humans
In 2013 I took my first international trip to Iran. With the aid of an interpreter, I was able to capture portraits of random Iranians on the streets of several cities. Later that year I partnered with the United Nations for the ‘UN/HONY World Tour,’ where I photographed and interviewed random people in twelve different countries including Iraq, South Sudan, and The Democratic Republic of Congo. Over the next several years I would profile people on the streets of 40 different countries. In 2020 the work from these travels was turned into a book of international stories called Humans which was released in 2020.
Over the past 15 years, in the course of creating Humans of New York, I have photographed and interviewed over ten thousand people around the world. During this time Humans of New York has been able to raise over $20 million for various people and causes featured on the platform. Artistically the work continued to grow in scope, and several long form stories have been shared online. One of these, Tanqueray, was turned into a #1 NYT Bestselling book in 2022. In the latest season of my work I have returned to the streets of New York, to capture the city where it all began. Dear New York will be published in October of 2025.