If a random guy with a camera walked up to you on the street and started asking you personal questions, would you stick around for a chat and a picture or would you tell him where to go? Author and photographer Peter Varga has successfully approached 2,500 people on the streets of Dublin for his photography project, Humans of Dublin and they all told him their stories:
"It's easier than you would think. People always ask me, 'Oh how many people turn you down?’ And it just doesn’t happen."
Humans of Dublin is inspired by the photoblog Humans of New York, which was started in 2010 by photographer Brandon Stanton. It became hugely successful as a blog, a book and even a documentary series. It spawned a lot of Humans of... projects and one of those is is the one Peter started in 2014. Peter joined Ray D’Arcy in studio to talk about the 10th anniversary of Humans of Dublin.
"The whole project came about because I was starting a photography course, and I was afraid to go there empty-handed... And at around the same time my girlfriend – who is now my wife – introduced me to Humans of New York."
Peter was working in a coffee shop at the time, and he had set himself the challenge of skipping small talk and instead making meaningful conversation with the shop’s customers.
"I had a photographer friend who became my mentor. He was a regular customer in there and we just started to chat about photography. And there were people coming in and they were talking about their work. I would get to know them just by skipping the small talk... I got to know them and because of that, they became regular customers."
Although he was a good barista and enjoyed working in the coffee shop and was very much into coffee – indeed, he still is – Peter didn’t want to make a career out of it. Hence the photography course. And he credits the success of his interview technique with his good listening skills:
"You shouldn’t go there with a list of questions. So, I had to develop over the years this technique of basing your next question on their answers so you can go really deep in a conversation. And that’s really important, I think, to get the story."
Peter, it’s fair to say, takes great pains to get talking to people about themselves. Even when he’s going abroad, he tells Ray, he doesn’t get a haircut first, preferring to wait until he’s in the country he’s visiting, so he can talk to a barber there about their life and country. It’s quite an impressive dedication to hearing what other people have to say and Peter believes that a good listener has to be prepared to park their ego:
"Lots of the time people think that it’s the most important thing for you to be the centre of attention. What I realised is that if you just removed your ego and you remove yourself from the whole, like, centre of attention and you just ask questions, you get to learn so much. And people usually remember you with the way you made them feel. If you ask people about their lives, you make them feel important."
Wise words indeed. And it seems, in Peter’s experience at least, that people are more likely to open up to a stranger than to someone that they know because, he says they really appreciate it when they’re listened to. All budding reporters and chat show hosts take note!
You can hear Ray’s full conversation with Peter by clicking above. You can visit Peter’s website – which has the rather brilliant strapline "I shoot people and then I ask questions" – here. And Peter’s book, Humans of Dublin, is published by Gill Books.