Hope for the Future: A Guest Post by Brandon Stanton
The creator of Humans of New York shares the real, raw, funny, heartbreaking and human stories that make up every corner of the city. This new collection features vibrant, never-before-seen photographs and anecdotes from real New Yorkers. Read on for an exclusive essay from Brandon Stanton on writing Dear New York.
Hardcover
$21.00
$42.00
Dear New York
Dear New York
In Stock Online
Hardcover
$21.00
$42.00
The inspiration for the groundbreaking Grand Central Station installation, Dear New York is a love letter to the streets, stories, and souls that define the heart of the city and its people—from the #1 bestselling author of Humans of New York and one of the great storytellers of our time.
The inspiration for the groundbreaking Grand Central Station installation, Dear New York is a love letter to the streets, stories, and souls that define the heart of the city and its people—from the #1 bestselling author of Humans of New York and one of the great storytellers of our time.
New York City gives me hope for the future. The entire world is here, we’re all crushed together on the same sidewalks and in the same subway cars, and despite our differences and despite annoying the heck out of each other sometimes, we make it work. There is something very hopeful in that for me. Even though the world seems so dark right now and seems to be teetering on the edge, New York City represents a hope for humanity as a whole, because New York City is humanity as a whole.
My book Dear New York is my love letter to the city and I’ve never been prouder of a work I’ve created. The book is the inspiration for a much larger piece of art. For two weeks, all three levels of Grand Central Station will be transformed into an art installation. Images and text from Humans of New York are projected in the main terminal day and night. More than 1,000 artists have joined me in contributing to this vision, including 600 school children who are exhibiting their photography along with stories about their loved ones in Vanderbilt Hall.
Both the Dear New York book and installation were lovingly and carefully made by some of the greatest people I’ve ever worked with. And if it provides even the slightest amount of joy, solace, beauty, or connection to the 750,000 people who pass through Grand Central every day, we’ve achieved our goal.
As I wrote in the introduction to Dear New York: “There is love in this city. For most it is waiting at home. But if not at home, then a phone call away, a block away, two doors down, three stops south. There is love at bus stops, in barber shops, on bombed-out baseball fields in the Bronx. In hospitals, in offices, in coffee shops, in classrooms—so much love in classrooms: unsung, unpaid, long after the bell has run. It’s in the churches, the mosques, the temples, the synagogues, the Atheist Club meeting in room 4b of the public library. There is love, often anonymous, in circles of people all over this city: sharing grief, shedding shame, with bloodshot eyes and trembling hands. There is even love in the darkest places: beneath bridges, beneath railway tracks, in jail cells, in crack houses. Wherever there are people, there is love. And nowhere are there more people, packed in a smaller place, than New York City. There is everything else here, God knows. But alongside it, among it, between it, despite it, behind it, there is love.”
