Humans of Hanover
Though I pursued this project in my senior year of high school, I regard it as one of the projects that taught me about communication and compassion the most. Check out the Humans of Hanover site and Facebook page that accompanies the project!
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My high school offers a Senior Bridges program, which allows students to pursue an independent project of their choosing. As a budding self-taught photographer who seeks out learning from others' stories, I knew I wanted to focus my theme on photojournalism, based on the Humans of New York brand by Brandon Stanton.
Brandon Stanton and his book "Humans of New York Stories"
I began by researching both how Brandon organized his journalism and how he achieved effective, meaningful conversations with strangers, and planned a framework for my own project. I maintained two platforms—a Facebook page and a Wix site for accessibility reasons.
Wix site
My interactions were sorted into two categories: strangers I spontaneously approached (modeled off Brandon's experiences) and hour-long weekly interviews with people in the community that I specifically reached out to. Both formats gifted me invaluable stories and relationships, some that I still maintain to this day. The conversations with strangers pushed me far out of my comfort zone in initiating and establishing trust and empathy in such a short period of time, while the longer sit-down interviews allowed me to delve deeper into someone's life.
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Through this semester-long project, I learned not only more about others' experiences, but also about myself and how much I value human interaction. I learned the balance between having a voice and providing an ear to listen. Most importantly, I found that at the end of the day, everyone just wants to be heard, and I'm incredibly thankful for the opportunity to have helped provide a platform for meaningful amplification of these voices.
