Humans of New York’s Brandon Stanton is interviewing the people of Pakistan, and the stories so far are amazing

Humans of New York (HONY), the wildly popular street photography portfolio started by Brandon Stanton, is currently sharing stories beyond the five boroughs, documenting portraits, stories and voices in a different venue – Pakistan.

What started out as a simple photography blog in 2010 has mushroomed into an international multimedia, humanitarian project with a simple concept: Taking a candid, high-quality portrait of someone of the street and pair it with a real yet unique anecdote of his or her life. Today, the page has inspired hundreds of “Humans of” pages around the world, highlighting the work of local, emerging photographers and capturing touching vignettes of a conversation in a simple and powerful way.

Last year, Stanton was invited on a global tour by the United Nations to build awareness for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals project, by attaching human faces to the initiative’s written objectives. Visiting 11 countries in 50 days, including Jordan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, India and Ukraine, the photographer hoped to listen to as many stories as he could and highlight the often neglected fact that everybody has a story to tell.

“Continuing in the tradition of last summer, I’m going to be traveling during the month of August and posting stories from overseas. Only this time I’ll be visiting two countries instead of trying to span the world because that was exhausting, and it also caused my poor senile dog to forget my existence,” Stanton posted on the HONY Facebook page. “The first stop is Pakistan. Hope you enjoy.”

After he was unable to visit Pakistan last year due to visa issues, his fans in the South Asian nation have reacted ecstatically to the news that he will be visiting their country as part of his annual international tour.

Besides achieving the typical, naïve “They’re just like us” sentiment from the blog’s millions of followers frm around the world, the social media phenomenon’s portraits also have the innate, poignant ability to showcase the universal humanity of each person captured on camera and draw out the essence of their story in a short, pithy way that transcends borders, differences and issues.

“Those are the places that have the most extreme headlines coming out,” Stanton said in an interview last year.  “Those are the places most skewed in people’s heads. The work has a very humanizing effect in places that are misunderstood or feared.”

The stories from Pakistan so far have already captured the world by storm ranging from wonderful advice from a young boy about swimming and stories of young love to very real and raw anecdotes of hardship and overcoming them.

“…I try not to form these overarching philosophies about what HONY’s about, what is it contributing to the world, what’s the meaning behind the work, you know, why am I doing it?” Stanton said in a 2013 interview. “I’m doing it because I love it, other people seem to enjoy it and I want to get better at it. If there’s meaning behind the work, let that come out organically.”

Here are some of the stories captured so far in their own words:

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