Hi everyone, today I will be discussing the popular photo blog Humans of New York in terms of its purpose, intended audience and the extent to which it can be considered a life narrative. HONY was originally started by Brandon Stanton as a photography project that displayed photographs of 10,000 New Yorkers, articulating the diverse population found in New York City (Stanton, Brandon). The project later expanded to incorporate quotes and personal stories of the photographed individuals, generating an international following of 20 million people on different social media platforms including Instagram and Facebook (Stanton, Brandon). Similarly, their slogan of “NYC – One Story at a Time” conveys their intent to deconstruct the broad identity of a city or culture by focussing on the individuals that it consists of (Stanton, Brandon). HONY maintains a primary focus on events of trauma or tragedy experienced by people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, eliminating the social status of the individuals it features therefore representing all human experiences as equal.
Humans of New York targets a primarily western audience that engages in social media. Their effort to address this audience can be seen through the organisation of their posts into ‘Countries’ and ‘Series.’ The subcategories that fall under each of these titles are not experiences ordinarily held by their target audience, revealing the goal of HONY to educate their audience and evoke an emotional response. The series titles that are currently featured include, Invisible Wounds, Paediatric Cancer, Inmate Stories, Syrian Americans and Refugee Stories (Stanton, Brandon). By addressing these current public issues through this type of format, HONY is able to demonstrate their effect on individual lives. This method works as an appeal to pathos by evoking an emotional response in a public that has become desensitised due to the constant statistical representation of trauma. Similarly, HONY focus’ on the individual experiences of people living in less economically developed countries such as Pakistan, Iraq and South Sudan (Stanton, Brandon). By providing individual life narratives and voices to a culture that has been overlooked or generalised in the western world, HONY reminds its readers of the universality of human nature and human experience. In this way, the struggles and hardships faced by people in a context that seems foreign in the mainstream media suddenly appears more relevant and relatable to western readers.
I think that Humans of New York can be considered a form of life narrative as it describes a pivotal life event and the impact that it has had on an individual. As each of the posts are presented in quotation marks, the story is represented as a direct transcript of what the person photographed has shared. This is important as it ensures that the story is free from the third party bias that HONY would impose through their retelling of the story. However, due to the length of each post, they do not provide much background information or context in the way that most life narratives do. In this way, they behave as ‘snapshots’ into people’s lives that are carefully selected to contribute to the overall image of HONY.
Works Cited:
Stanton, Brandon. Humans of New York, www.humansofnewyork.com.
