Brandon Stanton started Humans of New York as a street photography blog project after moving to New York City in November 2010 at age 25.
In a December post the following year, he added a snippet of the conversation that he and his subject had during their impromptu photo session and something clicked.
“When I came to New York I was a pure photographer, but this has evolved and transitioned [and] it’s now more about the interview and the conversation,” said Stanton.
The content encompasses the universality of people’s struggles, dreams, fears and joys.
“I’ve always been diligent about approaching as wide a range of people as possible in as many neighborhoods as possible to get a wide breadth and range of lived experiences,” said Stanton. “That involves getting rejected a lot.”
He subsequently moved Humans of New York fully onto social media, where the storytelling came to the forefront even more. It has since grown an active following of more than 29 million followers, raised roughly $20 million for charities and causes highlighted alongside the portraits of individuals.
The October 2025 publication of his most recent book, Dear New York, coincided with Stanton’s public art exhibition in Grand Central Station, one that replaced all its physical advertising with his portraits and also included works by 600 public school students and 11 local photographers.
Brandon Stanton attends his ‘Dear New York’ press preview at Grand Central Station on October 5, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski / Getty Images)
Over the past 15 years, Stanton has photographed and interviewed more than 10,000 individuals (“I’ve lost track of the number”) and featured thousands of stories from New York City and beyond.
Humans of New York expanded nationally and internationally, and Stanton has photographed and interviewed subjects in countries as far and wide as Iran, Italy and Indonesia.
Stanton’s simple format of sharing glimpses into the inner lives of the ordinary, and extraordinary, people he approaches on the street resonated with Humans of New York’s worldwide audience and formed meaningful connections.
“Out of personal curiosity and what I think makes each story most interesting is the thing this person can tell me that nobody else can. And that almost always comes from the person’s lived experience,” said Stanton. “It’s normally not a belief. It’s not an ideology. It’s not an opinion. It’s almost always something they’ve gone through and the wisdom they extracted from going through that.”
Stanton is the author of four other New York Times bestseller books, Tanqueray (2022), Humans (2020), Humans of New York: Stories (2015) and Humans of New York (2013).
“We have long followed Brandon’s Humans of New York project and consider it more important than ever in today’s febrile social climate when it is so important for people to understand and engage with each other, especially in such a diverse city as New York, but also lots of other places around the world that people have so little understanding of, such as Iran,” said Steve Barrett, VP, editorial director, PRWeek.
“Brandon is an inspiration to many in the PR sector and the installation in Grand Central Station brought a lot of attention to that, as well as the leadership he has shown through excellent content and communication.”
This is the 14th year of the Communicator of the Year Award category, which honors an outstanding communicator in the period covered by this year’s awards, but who does not necessarily work in the PR industry.
Previous honorees included Malala Yousafzai, Michael Phelps, Edie Windsor, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot and David Hogg.
Stanton will accept his honor at the PRWeek Awards gala ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City on Thursday, March 12. For more information and to purchase tickets to the PRWeek Awards, click here.