Wherever I go, I just try to show normal life. If the work helps to dispel stereotypes, it's because I seek not to portray the extremities of a place, but the vast majority of people who are quite normal and are having normal life experiences.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of portraying everyday life to challenge stereotypes.
Brandon Stanton expresses his intention to showcase the universal nature of human experiences through his work. Instead of focusing on extreme cases or sensational stories, he strives to highlight the ordinary lives of people, illustrating that the majority of individuals lead regular, relatable lives, which can help break down preconceived notions and stereotypes about different communities.
In practice
In a presentation about the impact of photography on societal perceptions.
When you are interviewing refugees, each person you talk to has a different story that could come from a horror movie. So many people talk about seeing their families get murdered before their eyes. Then I go to Central Park, and people are talking about their third divorce and paying tuition.
I think that even though some of the things on 'Humans of New York' are kind of very personal and very revealing, I think the discomfort with sharing that tends to be overwritten by the appreciation of being able to distill the experience of your life into a story and share it with other people.
I always say that my favorite people to interview are the people who are at the beginning and the ends of their lives because they have two alternate perspectives of the world, and neither of them are less profound.
It's a very immersive and intense form of travel to walk around with an interpreter and stop random people on the street and ask them about their lives.
Somebody's willingness to let me photograph them, and willingness to tell me a story, has nothing to do with the words I say. It all has to do with the energy I'm giving off, which hopefully is very genuine, very interested energy. It's just two people having a conversation in the street. I think that's where genuine content comes from.
All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me. It’s exactly as if I’d said, ‘I want rococo with a spot of Gothic in it and a bit of Buddhist temple’—they have no idea what I’m talking about. About the best red is to copy the color of a child’s cap in any Renaissance portrait.
Instead of art I have taught philosophy. Though technique for me is a big word, I never have taught how to paint. All my doing was to make people to see.
The opportunity to create a small world between two pieces of cardboard, where time exists yet stands still, where people talk and I tell them what to say, is exciting and rewarding.
People haven't always been there for me, but music always has.
It interests me to imagine characters shifting from one situation and one location to another for whatever the circumstances may be.
A writer's definitive death is when no one reads his books anymore. That's the final death.
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