Arts and Compassion

Creative Practice Week 4

            
             Reflecting on Brandon Stanton’s website, Humans of New York (HONY) compassion project, I was inspired by the creative process of how his project developed along with his style of photograph and interview.  His story, how HONY started, with an idea to create an exhaustive catalogue of New York City’s inhabitants; a few months into the project began to take on a different character. He began to collect quotes and short stories from the people he met and included them alongside their photographs, this is a powerful example of how the creative process works in all mediums. One starts with the idea, however once you begin to create the art it takes on its own character and develops into its own creation through the creative process. It is so important, as an artist, to be open and sensitive to the ebb and flow of your artwork allowing it to become what it will be. This is what happened with Brandon’s project, HONY, when he was in the midst of the project, sensitive to his subjects, he began to compassionately listen to their story and put it together with their photograph.  The HONY project took off into a vibrant blog of over eight million followers and it became a number one New York Times bestselling book (Stanton, 2010).

            Brandon’s photographs and interviews are focused on telling people’s stories. For my Creative Practice Blog 4 I tried to mimic his style. My subject is Micaela who is now seven. Her mother is a longtime friend and I had the privilege of interviewing Micaela.  I decided to keep the stories for each photograph simple and short snippets since I was using several pictures of her, and I felt it would be quicker for me to imitate and learn Brandon’s process.

      Learning the process of combining photography with storytelling I really enjoyed and am inspired to explore creating more with other subjects. What I have learned about listening and telling ones story can easily be combined with all different art mediums.  Compassionate listening and communicating ones story through storytelling with the arts becomes an act of compassion. This Creative Practice exercise has opened up new creative concepts that I am looking forward to pursuing in my artwork and AIM practice.  

Stanton, B. (2010). Humans of New York. Retrieved November 15 from             http://www.humansofnewyork.com/about.