‘Humans Of New York’ Is Telling Refugees’ Stories In Europe This Week

Since launching in 2010, Brandon Stanton’s photo project Humans Of New York has always been unashamedly compassionate. Whether on his Tumblr, Facebook or in his book, his most affecting portraits have always been those with an unexpected or harrowing story.

Earlier this year, for instance, a post of a young boy went viral and provoked heartfelt response from Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Ellen. Its short message read: “I’m homosexual and I’m afraid about what my future will be and that people won’t like me”.

And, whether you’re into sentimentality or not, it makes the project a great storytelling medium for compassionate causes. After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Stanton took his camera to the showcase the people who had been most affected and launched a crowdfunding campaign to help them. Last year, he partnered with the United Nations to travel Africa and the Middle East. The resulting photos showed a compelling depiction of life in conflict and famine; a stark comparison to his usual catalogue of zany old people and upbeat hipsters in Central Park.

Now, in a similar initiative led by the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR, Stranton is heading around Europe to document the people at the heart of the ongoing refugee crisis. Though his destinations aren’t yet locked in, he’ll be travelling around for the next week sharing stories from refugees and those who are trying to help their journey.

“Together, these migrants are part of one of the largest population movements in modern history,” he wrote in his first post this weekend. “But their stories are composed of unique and singular tragedies. In the midst of the current ‘migrant crisis’, there are millions of different reasons for leaving home. And there are millions of different hardships that refugees face as they search for a new home.”

To kick things off, Stranton’s re-visited an old friend and told his story in a whopping six-part series. Though he had his portrait taken last year in Iraq, Muhammed has had much happen over the last year. While fleeing Syria for good, he was held back by pleas from his family who were still in great danger. After his father was beaten, Muhammed was blackmailed for all his escape money and his brother was murdered by ISIS.

“They found our address on his ID card, and they sent his head to our house, with a message: ‘Kurdish people aren’t Muslims’,” he said. “My youngest sister found my brother’s head. This was one year ago. She has not spoken a single word since.”

You should just read the whole story. Against all odds, it nearly has a happy ending.

–

–

–

–

–

–

When Stanton first traveled to the Middle East last year, he was criticised by some for over-simplifying things. Speaking of his work more generally, Daniel D’Addario of Gawker accused the photographer of reducing people to caricatures and decontextualising their thoughts or stories.

“It appears that Stanton sees people not as people but as vectors of how young, white New Yorkers see them,” he wrote. “One hardly need to read the captions, which are drawn from conversations Stanton has with his subjects — the sentences he chooses are never surprising or enlightening. They’re designed to confirm safe assumptions about the inner lives, or lack thereof, of everyone in New York.”

And, while that may still hold some truth for some of those talking about angst or politics on the streets of Manhattan, it seems to be busted here. In fact, this new series from Stanton follows suit in a long line of genuine attempts to engage with refugees’ viewpoints and stories of survival, even in Australia. The City of Sydney are currently hosting monthly discussions with asylum seekers and earlier this month a new Facebook page beat Humans of New York at their own game.

New Humans of Australia tells similarly long and distressing tales of migration and it will give you precisely all of the feels.

–

–

Humans of New York will be posting similar stories for the rest of the week here. It’s going to be tough. Feature image via Humans of New York.