Stanton was in his late 20’s when his bond trading job in Chicago vanished and he decided to take up photography as a hobby. The hobby soon became an obsession as he devoted his days to taking photographs, first in Chicago and then moving on to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York City.  Despite his plan to head to the West Coast, Stanton fell in love with the Big Apple especially its hordes of people on the street.  The result was this book published 15 years ago.

As he writes in the introduction, “The sidewalks were covered with people. The buildings were impressive but what struck me most were the people. There were tons of them. And they all seemed to be in a hurry.”  He began to post his thousands of photographs on social media and a web site, and in just over a year he had half a million fans!  Leveraging Tumblr (whatever that is?), he grew his fan base and began to develop this book.  Walking several thousand miles in NYC and stopping more than 10,000 people to ask questions and take their photos, HONY was born.

Leafing through this book was a joy.  The full spectrum of New York’s people in all colors, sizes, shapes, ages, and personal styles is on display from the mundane and plain to the flamboyant and outrageous, and while the captions locate the site of the photo and in many cases feature a quote from the subject, the real pleasure is in the visuals.

Stanton was named one of ‘Time”s “30 under 30 people changing the world” in 2010 when this book hit the bestseller list and remained on it for 26 weeks in 2013/14.  He has since traveled to Pakistan, the Middle East, Uganda, and other countries photographing and often raising money to help impoverished populations.  His new book, “Dear New York” was published several months ago and some of those photos were featured in the largest public art exhibit in NYC in 20 years at Grand Central Station.  My dear friend, Tony Kahn and his wife Harriet were featured in both the book and the exhibit, and that is how I discovered Stanton’s work.

I hope you will as well.  It’s entertaining, thought-provoking, and makes it clear that trump and his white nationalist movement is doomed to failure in our wonderful, polyglot, diverse, and endlessly fascinating country.