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!
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.
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.
