Humans of New York inspires student photography groups

The popular Humans of New York Facebook page by Brandon Stanton has inspired two similar groups on campus, Humans of JHU, which was launched on Oct. 1 and Humans of Hopkins, which began in 2014 but remained inactive from Oct. 2015 until Oct. 4, this year.

Humans of JHU is currently run by sophomores Sabrina Chen, Zi-Yi Choo and Calvin Qian, while Humans of Hopkins was created by Class of 2016 graduates Isabella So and Whitney Kim and is currently being run by junior Celina Lee.

Both groups emulate the style of Humans of New York by choosing, interviewing and photographing random individuals on the Hopkins campus.

Choo discussed the role of the photo interviews in creating a community on campus of individuals with differing backgrounds.

“Humans of New York has had a tremendous and positive impact on our global community; Brandon Stanton, [founder of Humans of New York], brought a heterogeneous population together simply by sharing real stories,” Choo wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “With Humans of JHU, we want to create an intimate community at Hopkins [and] we aim to connect diverse peoples and foster a community built on understanding the stories and experiences of others.”

So spoke about how Humans of Hopkins hoped to replicate Humans of New York as a medium for storytelling.

“We were just inspired to take on the route that Humans of New York did because we found that at Hopkins, it was a very isolating experience to be there,” So said. “Even now looking back at my undergraduate [experience], I believe that you compete with these people, you learn with them, but you don’t know the stories they bring to campus, and we thought it was really important to kind of have a medium for which they would be able to express that and kind of share that with the community in a way that they weren’t afraid to, and that they were ready to. They got to choose their own words, and they got to see it for themselves, so it was pretty great.”

Both groups also highlighted the importance of being unbiased in choosing their interviewees. So spoke to the way their group tried to reach out to everyone regardless of their backgrounds, labels or affiliations.

“During this entire process lots of people would come up to us and say, ‘Hey interview me, I have a really great thing I want to say,’ and a lot of these times, it was people who kind of wanted to bring their stories forward for a purpose but what we found was it was best when we took [people’s] stories very candidly and spontaneously because it became so much more authentic that way,” So said. “So we kind of did that, and we tried not to focus on any specific demographic — graduate student or undergraduate student, employees on the campus — some people who weren’t even affiliated with Hopkins. It was just that difference in community that [was] really important to us.”

Humans of JHU specifically addressed the issue of maintaining the anonymity and privacy of their interviewees. Qian described the process of ensuring anonymity, especially when the interviewees recounted sensitive stories.

“We’ve been thinking that the lack of anonymity due to Hopkins being pretty small might be a problem in some cases. When we share a person’s story on our page, we don’t want that post to affect them outside of social media,” Qian wrote. “In the case where we need to keep someone anonymous, we’ll take photos without their face, but even still people could find identifying features. It’s an issue we are continuously thinking about. There are happy and sad stories, and we want to share all of them. That’s what makes a page like this special; It’s raw, unaffiliated and sometimes painfully real.”

Although Humans of Hopkins was never an official Hopkins organization, its founders had the opportunity to experience and witness many unique events. So described the way in which the group engaged with the Baltimore community during their time on campus.

“During the Baltimore uprising in May 2015, we went out into the community. Whitney brought her camera out and recorded, and really talked with the community and engaged in a way that so much of Hopkins really did not during that time,” So said. “Everyone was afraid to go out, people were just staying in their dorms, but she really interacted. I think that’s the heart of what we did, being very bold in the way you want to learn about people. When you’re doing this quote-in-quote interview, it’s not really a one-way ‘I ask a question you answer my question’ [situation]. It was very much conversational.”

So also spoke to the fact that their group allowed them the opportunity to meet Brandon Stanton.

“In addition to that, we met Brandon Stanton, the creator of [Humans of New York]. Right before he went on stage he was talking to us and we were interviewing him, and we got to being buddies with him and we got a shout out,” So said.

Humans of JHU, as a new group, is still developing the logistics of running the page and setting up their team.

Qian explained the group’s current aims, as it works to maintain a steady stream of content.

“Our goal right now is consistency. We are aiming to post at least a few times a week, but we also want each of our posts to be meaningful,” Qian wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “We just don’t want the page to go inactive for weeks when none of us have the time to commit to interviewing and photographing — we want our page to be active and dynamic. We hope to eventually expand our team in order to open this experience to others. We’ve gotten a lot of interest from people wanting to join, but at the moment we are still figuring things out ourselves.”

As both pages are quite similar, Lee from Humans of Hopkins believes that there is a possibility of merging the two groups into one in order to avoid any confusion for students and readers.

“I would have to talk with the founders [of Humans of JHU about merging] but I don’t see why not,” Lee wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “It’s kind of funny that we have two separate pages.”

Choo from Humans of JHU also spoke to the possibility of the two groups working together in the future.

“Humans of JHU really wants to promote an open-minded and diverse campus, and the intention is to be inclusive to new ideas; it would be really cool to collaborate and work with people who have similar intentions,” Choo wrote.

Both pages have been welcomed and positively received by students.

Freshman Mariah Harris reflected on how the pages work to build a more diverse sense of community on campus.

“The stories make the face of Hopkins much more personal. It’s a great way to gain perspective from the different experiences of Hopkins students,” freshman Mariah Harris said.

Freshman Michelle Chiu echoed this sentiment adding on how the pages were a good way to learn about lives of others on campus.

“It’s a super interesting way to learn new things about people, especially the vast number of students on campus who you haven’t met yet,” Chiu said. “It’s a really great way to connect the community and learn a little bit more about others. I think oftentimes whatever you learn from that little bit of information that person gives reflects a part of the larger community’s story. A picture is worth a thousand words, so if you combine the two you have even more to say.”