A couple of months ago we shared Brandon Stanton’s ongoing photo series Humans of New York, in which the dedicated photographer had amassed thousands of portraits of the city’s diverse population. He has continued to snap shots of pedestrians and locals all across the Big Apple but it’s his most recent set of images, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, that seem the most telling of the city and its people.
Whether his subjects are a group of teens playfully riding a boat across a river of water that has replaced the concrete streets or a couple looking woefully at the devastation that has destroyed their homes, the images evoke a sense of the varied emotions being felt throughout the city. What adds further to HONY‘s visual series are the stories behind each photo.
On its Facebook page, where Stanton frequently updates with new photos, the photographer includes short anecdotes to accompany each portrait. It’s heartbreaking to see a man sullenly standing on Coney Island where a displaced car and tree litter the streets, but it makes it so much more emotional to know that the man is quoted as saying “Could you ask them to send fresh water to Neptune Avenue?” On the other end of the spectrum, there’s also a little girl with her candy bucket in tow walking across a similarly devastated street whose father says, “She’s an optimist.”
