15 years, 10,000 stories, 1 institution reimagined: Inside 'Dear New York'

New York Post

Watch 15 years, 10,000 stories, 1 institution reimagined: Inside 'Dear New York' - New York Post on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00You know, I've worked 15 years alone, and this took a team of over 100 people to make.

00:04This is by far the biggest transformation in the 112 years of Grand Central.

00:08So many things that are happening around us right now have never happened.

00:14We are here with Brandon Stanton, who founded Humans of New York.

00:18Now you've written another book, Dear New York, and we are in this incredible installation here at Grand Central.

00:24Tell us a little bit about what you're doing here.

00:26So, Dear New York is a transformation of Grand Central Station.

00:31It's two things. It's a book that enabled and inspired all of this.

00:35100% of the proceeds of the book went into what we see here,

00:38which is a complete artistic transformation of Grand Central Station to honor and celebrate the diversity and humanity of the city.

00:45It's an immersive experience about community, and I think we really hit the mark we were trying to hit,

00:51and yeah, it's been beautiful to see it come to light.

00:53The prologue of the book engages with the city through a subway ride,

00:58and I identify a seven train beneath Grand Central as the one place in the universe

01:02where more of humanity is packed into a smaller place than anywhere else.

01:07And I thought there was something kind of sacred about that.

01:09And so I wanted to do something special in this building particular,

01:12and then I started pulling on that string, and I eventually discovered that it was possible

01:18if you begged, borrowed, negotiated, pleaded, to pull together enough of this building

01:24so that it would be like one piece of art.

01:26And that idea really excited me because I had a big enough portfolio from the past 15 years

01:32where I thought I could just about recreate the city of New York and its people in a single building.

01:38That's what this attempt was.

01:40And then I got really excited about the idea about letting other people portray their New York

01:45on this same stage, and then that is what came from what is around us.

01:50In Vanderbilt Hall, the installation features photographs by local New Yorkers,

01:54from school kids to artists and photographers.

01:56In fact, one of the photographers featured in the installation

01:59is New York Post photographer Olga Ginsberg.

02:02You know, I've worked 15 years alone, and this took a team of over 100 people to make.

02:10So this is the first time working with that many collaborators.

02:14I mean, I'm looking around.

02:15This installation is on every wall.

02:17There's a piano.

02:18Yeah.

02:19And Grand Central has never done anything like this before.

02:21Right.

02:21There's so many things that were allowed these two weeks that have never been allowed before.

02:26They don't even let the restaurants play the radio

02:28because they don't want sound in the main concourse.

02:31But the MTA, slowly, it wasn't all at once.

02:34But over the past six months, they started to see it come together,

02:36and they really started to believe that this is something beautiful for New York.

02:40And that's why we don't have sound in the main terminal,

02:43because they have those announcements.

02:46But they brought it all together,

02:48and we were allowed to do something transformative in this building.

02:52And I think that's what makes this so special,

02:54is that not only are the people so beautiful,

02:57but it's in this beautiful place that is very protected

03:00and very hard to do something like this then.

03:05I think Humans of New York's been around long enough now, 15 years.

03:09Everybody seems to have a Humans of New York story,

03:12whether it's their boss's daughter that I photographed,

03:15or their mom, or something like that.

03:18So I tend to find that these days,

03:20if I haven't photographed somebody, New York's small enough that I've photographed somebody that they know.

03:25So normally, in addition to saying hi, and sometimes I love your work,

03:28everybody's kind of got a story to tell.

03:30It's not even probably six degrees of separation.

03:32It's probably like one degree of separation.

03:34Yeah, it's like New York, when you've interviewed 10,000 people,

03:37is somewhat of a small town.

03:39I just saw another woman out there that I had interviewed a few years ago.

03:42Do you remember them all?

03:43So, I used to.

03:46And then the number got so big,

03:48and then I kind of started remembering faces, necessarily.

03:52And then, normally if somebody will coax me and remind me of their story,

03:55it will come back, but I have forgotten some over the years.

03:5815 years of Humans of New York has really just been one guy out there,

04:03you know, learning the stories of people.

04:04So, you know, maybe it seems like a big leap from the outside

04:08to, you know, do something as Brandon Stanton and not Humans of New York.

04:12But for me, it's just doing the same thing that I've always done.

04:15I imagine that was a choice to not have a team,

04:17because this is a brand with a huge reach.

04:20Well, and I wanted to be an artist, and, you know, it did become a brand.

04:23You're right.

04:23But I've never really looked at it as a brand.

04:26And I think if I did look at it as a brand,

04:28I probably would have gotten a team to kind of scale it and expand it.

04:32But I always saw it as my art,

04:33and I wanted to go deeper with it, not wider.

04:36So, you know, I wanted Humans of New York to be,

04:39every time I posted the best possible representation of a person that I could make.

04:44And that's a very personal effort and a very individual effort.

04:49We are underground as people are headed to the subway.

04:53So there is a bit of noise with all these humans in New York.

04:56But tell us a little bit about this space and the installation here.

05:00So this is the subway section, which is about 20% of the total Grand Central installation.

05:07It alone is the largest use of physical space for a single installation in the history of the subway system.

05:13I would guess about three times more vinyl than has ever been used in a single installation before.

05:18It is so refreshing to be somewhere in New York where you're not bombarded with ads.

05:23Instead, it's like, you stop and you look at these incredible photos, each for the story.

05:27Interestingly, like, a huge part of my negotiations with the MTA is they have a rule

05:31that you have to write your name on it and you have to write your brand on it to identify who paid for it.

05:37And so, like, a huge sticking point in our negotiations, as I was saying,

05:40it's got to only be people and stories.

05:42I know, it's almost like you come in and you breathe a sigh of relief because you're not being attacked with ads.

05:46Yeah, I hope so.

05:47You know, I hope also it goes a little further than that and maybe somebody stops

05:52and they read something that reminds them of their mom or how they dealt with their mother's death

05:56or their son's drug addiction.

05:58There's all of these little moments woven through the entirety of the subway system.

06:02I knew one person wasn't going to be able to experience all of them,

06:05but I was hoping as many people, if possible, could feel one thing

06:08that would possibly change the trajectory of their life, even a millimeter.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended