Celebrity photographer turns lens on Jerusalem

The photographer behind the wildly popular photo blog behind Humans of New York recently added Jerusalem’s mosaic of residents to his oeuvre, posting portraits with poignant stories of some of the city’s Jewish and Palestinian residents — and garnering hundreds of thousands of like on Facebook to boot.

“Before I return to New York portraits, I want to share some portraits and stories that I gathered on an unscheduled side trip that I took to Jerusalem,” Brandon Stanton wrote on Wednesday.

According to the Hindustan Times, Stanton arrived in Israel weeks ago as part of his 50-day worldwide tour, but held off from posting the photos until now.

“I went to Jerusalem — Israel and Palestine — but I haven’t posted the pictures yet because that was a side trip outside of the UN trip,” he said on September 13.

The page features several photos so far in its bid to capture a slice of the famously divided city though the captions have remained entirely apolitical, and none of the photos directly address the religion of its subjects in the caption.

In the first photo published of several Arab Israeli schoolgirls, Stanton describes the bashful response of his 16-year-old interpreter. In the third, a little boy and future bodybuilder describes his exercise goals.

Stanton also featured a picture of a number of Jewish volunteers and several disabled children at the Western Wall, describing their wish for the new year, and dedicated three posts to a Jewish Polish immigrant whose family perished in the Holocaust.

Unsurprisingly, the photos drew a fair amount of venomous critique in its comments which quickly turned to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Stanton, who began his street-photography project to document the diverse residents of New York after being fired from his job in finance, is the author of a bestselling book, and has over 10 million likes on Facebook.