Brandon Stanton, Creator of the Popular Humans of New York blog at Qatar Foundation. Pic: Abdul Basit / The Peninsula
Doha: Brandon Stanton, the creator of famous ‘Humans of New York’ has lauded the efforts made by Qatar and Qatar Foundation in areas of innovation and education.
Stanton in an interview with The Peninsula said that it is ‘amazing’ to see how the country is heading innovation and education.
“The Education City and the country are based on innovation and resources,” said Stanton, who is in Doha and delivered the keynote speech during the Qatar Foundation Convocation 2019, yesterday.
Stanton is an American author, photographer, and blogger. He is the author of ‘Humans of New York’, a photoblog and book. He is one of Time’s ‘30 Under 30 People Changing The World’.
He has emerged as a worldwide Internet phenomenon and one of today’s most influential story tellers. He started as a photographer and story teller in 2010, when he was fired from a bond trading job.
“Bond trading and photography are two completely different worlds. Bond trading is very intellectually stimulating and markets are fascinating. But it is a very synthetic world,” he said.
“The move to photography was opposite and it is interacting with the physical world, learning about people and their stories. But I think that’s what I was missing in bond trading,” he added.
Since 2010, Stanton has talked to 10,000 people living and working primarily in New York City, accompanied by bits of conversations about their lives. He has also travelled outside of the United States, capturing people and their lives in more than 20 countries, including Iran, Iraq, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Mexico.
Followed by over 25 million people on social media, ‘Humans of New York’ features daily glimpses into the lives of strangers on the streets of New York City.
“I look for people who are alone. People I choose randomly but it takes long time to get to the very emotional story of people,” said Stanton.
“As a photographer and story teller I used to get up and go choose what work I do,” he said. He also said that it is important to find the ‘big purpose’ of life which is “what we want to do and love what we do.”
In recent years, Stanton has expanded the blog to include stories from over thirty different countries, and was invited in 2015 to interview Barack Obama in the oval office. In 2017, ‘Humans of New York’ was turned into a television series that is now available on Facebook Watch.
