AN INSPIRING ART PROJECT
I opened it up and read To the city of New York. I had this crazy, juvenile idea that you were going to make all of my dreams come true. And you did. That gave me chills for all of the obvious reasons. I then, of course, went down a rabbit hole of research on the author, Brandon Stanton, reading his story, and the stories of the thousands of people who he has photographed and interviewed.
What’s so cool about it to me especially is that he started with a blog, one that didn’t get much traffic or attention for a whole year, and just kept doing it. He moved to New York without any money and made it his mission to document the human experience of living in that city. Much like Bill Hayes in Insomniac City, also known as one of the most authentic books I’ve ever read, he was interested in capturing real, mundane, imperfect moments of everyday life. It was his big, crazy idea that no one believed in, and then it was the idea that landed him on Time magazine’s “30 Under 30 People Changing The World” list. I mean, what?
His website, found here, is even cooler. I got totally sucked in and crawled through every corner of it. This one moved me especially. I think that what he is doing is kind of extraordinary.
