Humans of New York is back — and it takes us back in time

If you’re a New Yorker, you might find yourself—or a giant image of yourself—taking over the walls of Grand Central Terminal for two weeks. The historic Midtown Manhattan train station, with its monumental hall crossed daily by more than half a million people, becomes the stage for a grand return.

Humans of New York began as a wildly popular blog, in an era when Instagram barely mattered, and later became a global bestseller, spawning countless imitators and followers: a collection of photographs, voices, and stories of ordinary people drawn straight from the dense streets of the Big Apple — a project that now finds new life in the photographic book Dear New York, published by St. Martin’s Press, which had already surpassed 30,000 preorders before its release.

Brandon Stanton — the writer and photographer behind the project, who embodies the joyful myth of New York as a land of possibility — told ARTnews in an interview: “The general thesis is that all of New York is where the world comes together in a single place. And there’s something almost sacred about that—it’s like a microcosm, a proof of concept that humanity can get along even when shoved into the smallest spaces.”

Brandon Stanton

Stanton’s story is almost as remarkable as his photographs, and just as long. He began shooting in 2010, portraying workers and passersby from New York’s middle class and publishing everything on his blog, accompanied by short quotes from his conversations with the “humans of New York.” Instagram had just been born, and Facebook wasn’t yet a home for curated or editorial content. The blog was the cutting edge of digital storytelling in a world where the smartphone was still finding its footing.
Fast forward to 2013: New York Magazine calls the project “the biggest thing on the internet,” and from that moment on, Stanton’s path has been steadily upward.

Dear New York, his latest work, is a full-scale celebration of the city. It takes over the entire Grand Central Terminal: from subway platforms to the walls of Vanderbilt Hall, up to the 150 digital screens of the Main Concourse, which for two weeks have abandoned their usual Metropolitan Transportation Authority ads and announcements to become part of the installation. The walls display portraits and texts from Humans of New York, turning the city’s most iconic transport hub into a collective love letter. Vanderbilt Hall also hosts two parallel exhibitions: one dedicated to professional photographers selected through an open call, and another bringing together more than six hundred works by New York public school students.

During off-peak hours, pianists from the Juilliard School perform live music to accompany the visual experience. In total, more than a thousand people contributed to the project, directed by David Korins — the exhibition designer behind Immersive Van Gogh — and graphically designed by Pentagram, the London-based studio that works with everyone from The New York Times to the Tate Modern. The project was realized in collaboration with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Juilliard, and the New York City Department of Education.

When the first Humans of New York edition came out in 2013, people still wore “I <3 NY” T-shirts unironically, scammers weren’t yet impersonating ICE agents to scare Latino immigrants, fentanyl was only found in pharmacies, and while the city already had its distinctive smell, there were still traces of Abercrombie and Hollister perfume lingering in the air. To understand the collective sentiment sparked by a public artwork signed by one of the defining photographers of the 2010s, you can’t ignore these coordinates of mass culture.

The world of Humans of New York now feels distant, almost naïve — and it’s hard for those who woke up already in this present to fully grasp its tenderness. Yet when you read the comments under posts about the new work, things become clearer: “I hope that people still care about being human,” or “Those New York days were so holistic.”

Dear New York belongs to an era of dedications — to the city, and to America itself — a bit like Grand Central, a bit like candid street photography. And perhaps that’s why it resonates: because it offers the city a portrait that’s affectionate, unjaded.
After all, as the project’s authors write: “When the world feels like it’s on the brink, New York is still something to celebrate.” And, at least until October 19 — when the photographs that have taken over Grand Central will disappear — that sentiment seems once again to ring true.

Opening image: Brandon Stanton, Dear New York, Grand Central, New York, 2025. Photo Ahmed Gaber