Brandon Stanton decided to travel to Boston on Tuesday after one of his Facebook followers suggested he take his signature portrait-plus-anecdote style to the community coping with tragedy.

“I didn’t come to depict a city in crisis,” he said over the phone, “but to depict the vast majority of the city that is … getting back on its feet and getting back to normal.”

Stanton, 29, is the founder of Humans of New York, a photography project documenting the life of everyday people in New York City. He has dubbed this week “Humans of Boston.”

Finding Comfort In Portraits Of Bostonians

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Brandon Stanton/HONY

wnycradiolab:

Um, guys: public radio temporary tattoos.  Apparently some public radio stations will offer these at pledge drive time.  And WE LOVE THEM.

These are so cool!!!! Another good incentive to donate to your local member station! -Emily

Tell Us: In Times Of Tragedy, What Do You Want To See? : NPR

The questions aren’t new, but they’re still relevant: How do we use photos during times of crisis, both in the media and as general users of the Internet?

[Photographer Mike Brodie and a couple friends] were sitting on a couch on the front porch of that punk house (because “in the South, a lot of houses have couches on the porch,” he says). As Scott casually described how a passing train was headed to New Orleans, Brodie made up his mind.

“Probably two weeks after that, I left town by myself,” he says. “I had no idea what I was doing, but I just got on a train and went somewhere.”

He brought a Polaroid Spectra and one pack of film for a three-day trip. He was 17. And that marked the beginning of a yearslong relationship with train-hopping culture and photography.

Trains, Punks, Pictures And Books You Maybe Shouldn’t Read

Photo Credit: Mike Brodie/Twin Palms

The cherry blossoms are finally in bloom in Washington, D.C., and what better way to celebrate these beautiful Japanese gifts than with a haiku? Our callout on Facebook and Twitter yielded hundreds of spring haiku submissions. With the help of Ellen Compton, Roberta Beary and Kristen Deming of the Haiku Society of America, we selected 20 and made videos inspired by the top three.

Short And Sweet: Celebrating D.C.’s Cherry Blossoms With Haiku

Photo Credit: Lizzie Chen/NPR

Click through to see our interns’ lovely videos inspired by haiku. Great work by Gabriella Demczuk, Marie McGrory and Lizzie Chen!

NPR is nominated for a few Webby Awards and it would be awesome if you voted for In Practice: David Byrne And St. Vincent in the Best Editing People’s Voice category. 

It’s a great video and we’d love your support!

icphoto:

Happy Birthday Cornell Capa!

Today we celebrate the birthday of ICP’s founder, Cornell Capa.

Born in Budapest, Capa moved to Paris in 1936 to join his brother, legendary war photographer Robert Capa. Although he had intended to study medicine, Cornell was drawn to photography through his brother and began making prints for him, as well as for Henri Cartier-Bresson and Chim (David Seymour), and in 1937 he moved to New York to pursue a career.

After he had worked in the darkrooms of the Pix agency and LIFE for a few years, his first photo story was published in Picture Post in 1939. During World War II, Capa worked for the US Army Air Corps Photo-Intelligence Unit and the Army Air Corps’s public relations department. In 1946, he became a staff photographer at LIFE, based mainly in the American Midwest, and covered some three hundred assignments over the next three years. He was the magazine’s resident photographer in England for two years, after which he returned to the United States.

Upon Robert’s death in 1954, Capa left LIFE to continue his borther’s work at Magnum. Over the next twenty years, Capa photographed many important stories for Magnum, including the activities of the Perón government in Argentina; the Democratic National Conventions of 1956, 1960 and 1968; and John F. Kennedy’s first hundred days in office.

In the mid-1970s he devoted himself more to the care and promotion of other photographers’ work through his International Fund for Concerned Photography. In 1974, he organized the exhibition The Concerned Photographer, which led to the establishment of the International Center of Photography.  ICP’s mission was to give support to photography as a means of communication and creative expression, and to the preservation of photographic archives as a vital component of twentieth-century history. Capa served as ICP’s Director Emeritus until his death in 2008. 

Documerica was a simple concept. In the 1970s, a newly created Environmental Protection Agency hired a bunch of freelancers to document environmental issues around the country. It wasn’t the first time the government had subsidized photography. A few decades prior, the Farm Security Administration sponsored a similar program to catalog the Great Depression.

But in some ways, it was unprecedented. For one, enthusiasm within the environmental movement, which catalyzed the creation of the EPA, was at its height — which meant interest in (and support for) this kind of program was more palpable than ever.

Plus, Gifford Hampshire, the man who created Documerica, basically gave photographers free rein to shoot whatever they wanted. (Imagine, photographers: Getting paid to hit the road and capture America in your own, personal way.)

Do We Need A New Documerica?

Photo Credit: U.S. National Archives

nprmusic:

More elegant than the Travelocity Gnome, our famed office mate Maria Callas is on the move! This may not be Milan’s famed La Scala (where Maria first sang in 1950), but today she found the longest eSCALAtor in Washington. #divaonthemove

Follow @nprmusic on Instagram or NPR Classical on Facebook for the diva’s latest moves.

Follow Maria Callas around DC! -Emily

nprcodeswitch:

Mom Says: “Learn Chinese”: “By middle school, shame over my mom’s accented English made me ask her to stop volunteering to go on class field trips. She says she had been expecting the day to come when I found her embarrassing, whether it was because of language or just run-of-the-mill pre-teendom. Today, I still occasionally jump in and speak for her at places like doctor’s offices; fill out forms that she might not clearly understand or call the airlines on her behalf to change her flights.”

Photo Credit: Matt Stiles/NPR

Introducing Code Switch, a new blog on NPR covering race, ethnicity and culture.