Face Value

A Facebook page on the many faces of Delhi is slowly gaining popularity

Stanton is a celebrity and HONY has 5,330,655 followers and a book.

About two years ago, Delhi-based Kriti Sharma came across a rather interesting page on Facebook called “Humans of New York” (HONY). A young photographer named Brandon Stanton was busy documenting the lives of others living in New York. He put up pictures of New Yorkers everyday along with the conversations he had with them. Back then he had some 30,000 followers.

Today, Stanton is a celebrity and HONY has 5,330,655 followers and a book. For people like Sharma, New York has a face, a story and an emotional connect each day, all thanks to HONY. “After following the page for a month, I wanted to do the same in Delhi. I realised there was a void in my city that needed to be filled,” says Sharma, who now runs Humans of New Delhi (HOND) with friend Rajib Saha, a 28-year-old art director with a design firm in Delhi.

Hesitant about walking up to random people and striking up a conversation, Sharma sat on the idea for almost a year, before launching the page in August last year. It’s only in the last two-three months that the page has garnered some attention, and 5931 followers.

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“We were inconsistent in our posts because both of us have day jobs. We also had some difficulty with cameras and other equipment. But things are better, brighter now,” says Sharma, 25, a copywriter with an advertising firm in Delhi. The two work separately on weekdays and try and click the dwellers of Delhi together on weekends.

There are pictures of children cycling in Lodhi garden, an endearing one of a boy posing with a dog and two puppies with the quote “This is my gang”, an Arvind Kejriwal fan posing with a poem on him, autowallahs, RJs, journalists and some foreigners singing Hare rama hare Krishna in Janpath, not to miss the posts of adorable children who comprise the “Microfashion” section of the page. “We always take permission from people, even if it’s after taking a candid shot,” says Sharma.

The two have followed the HONY format to the T. Even the questions they pose are the same: What’s been your saddest/happiest moment? What has been your greatest achievement/struggle? “We did pose a different set of questions earlier but realised that these are the best. People open up quickly,” says Sharma.

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