Dear New York

In October 2025, Humans of New York turned Grand Central Terminal into the largest public art installation New York City has seen in decades.

For two weeks, nearly $3 million worth of advertising was stripped from every surface and replaced with Brandon Stanton’s portraits, quotes and stories — a sweeping visual love letter to the city.

My job as Head of Video was to deliver the moving images that would hold this enormous body of work together. The archive encompassed more than 1500 video interviews, plus b‑roll, hundreds of timelapses and thousands of Brandon’s street portraits, bringing the total data footprint to over 150 TB.

I oversaw the creation of all video elements — editing, color, online, archival and projection — across three distinct deliverables:

• an eight‑channel, 96‑minute projection loop of mixed stills and video covering every column in the concourse (the first time video has ever been projected there);
• a five‑channel, 31‑minute video installation that played on more than 150 digital screens on the 7, 4/5/6 and S platforms and the Metro-North train shed;
• a static loop on the three triptychs in the Main Concourse.

Eight 50‑foot projections surrounded commuters day and night. Designer David Korins described capturing every square inch of advertisement “not to bombard people, but to engulf them.” Below ground, Pentagram’s Andrea Trabucco‑Campos designed what the MTA called the most extensive use of physical subway space in its history.

The installation included more than 100 hours of music performed by Juilliard students and alumni, and a community showcase in Vanderbilt Hall featuring work by emerging artists and over 600 New York City public‑school students.

At one point, the entire Vanderbilt Hall exhibit was deconstructed and rebuilt around a prescheduled wedding — which, of course, became part of Dear New York. Zohran Mamdani came to visit, and Lin-Manuel Miranda played a surprise set on the Steinway. On the final night, hundreds of children from the Young People’s Chorus of New York City performed at the closing ceremony.

“A first-of-its-kind immersive experience that vividly celebrates the people of New York.”

To the thousands whose stories are woven into this tapestry, and the millions more who became part of it in passing: thank you.