Humans of New York (HONY) is a portrait photo blog on Facebook, it started in 2011 and now had over 8million followers.

Creator of HONY describes the project: “Hey there. My name is Brandon and I began Humans of New York in the summer of 2010, shortly after leaving my job in Finance. (OK, I actually got fired.) I started HONY because I thought it would be really cool to create an exhaustive catalogue of New York City’s inhabitants, so I set out to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and plot their photos on a map. Somewhere along the way, I began to interview my subjects in addition to photographing them. And alongside their portraits, I’d include quotes and short stories from their lives. Taken together, these portraits and captions became the subject of a vibrant blog. HONY now has over six million followers on social media, and provides a worldwide audience with daily glimpses into the lives of strangers on the streets of New York City.”

I’ve followed this project for around 12 months, and recently HONY has embarked with the UN on a 50 day trip across 10 countries. The first photos have started to come in from Iraq. They’re all very powerful portraits that glimpse life in a place we all hear about so often but seldom see inside of. Most photos have a single phrase as a quote from the subject, save but one that gives a candid and eloquent look into the author’s experience shifting from interviewing for human stories on the streets of New York to the lives of people fleeing war. It struck me as a particularly poignant post, but also just an interesting note on the difference in interviewing style that had ot be adopted in response to the context of the interview, particularly striking as the voice of the blog is usually that of the subject rather than the author of the blog.

 
“I normally go into my conversations with a set of proven questions to ask, that I find will elicit a wide variety of anecdotes from people’s lives: happiest moment, saddest moment, things like that. But with people fleeing war, it is absolutely impossible to discuss anything beyond the present moment. Their circumstances are so overpowering, there is absolutely zero room in their minds for any other thoughts. The conversation immediately stalls, because any topic of conversation beyond their present despair seems grossly inappropriate. You realize that without physical security, no other layers of the human experience can exist. “All day they do is cry for home,” she told me. (Dohuk, Iraq)”