‘Each other. And science.’
A couple as featured on the Humans Of York page
Three York teenagers are chronicling the life of the city. Here Sophie Brooks, Andrew Hodgson and Ada Wordsworth explain why
We are three students, Sophie, Ada and Andrew, currently studying for our GCSEs in York. York is our home, but we have come here from across the country; Sophie was born in Liverpool, Ada is from London and Andrew has lived in Glasgow.
Because of this, we feel that we are an accurate representation of one aspect of the diversity of our city. We suppose you could say we’re just average teenagers, with normal aspirations and hopes for later life – we hope to be successful and happy, as any other person would.
Like any teenager, when asked our interests, the first things to come to mind include food, sleeping, and funny cat videos (cliché much?).
We’ve always been aware of Humans Of New York, through social media, but only started to gain a real interest this year, when we realised its potential for other projects, and on a more general level.
We saw how HONY (as it is commonly abbreviated to) brought together the lives of every person in New York City, and showed us that the average person on the street is not so average.
Everyone has a voice; everyone has a story to tell. And so, Humans Of York was born to provide our community with a platform to speak.
Quizzing strangers
Her – ‘Nothing.’
Him – ‘Getting the dog.’
Approaching strangers on the street and quizzing them was never going to be easy, but we underestimated quite how nerve-racking it would be.
Despite this, now our first posts have been met with such great support, we feel that we will be able to approach our project with a far more personal and insightful frame of mind.
We really admire the ability of the founder of Humans Of New York ability to evoke such interesting and perceptive responses in the people he interviews.
It’s always been clear to us that, while we understand the importance of taking a good photo, its not so much that the exposure or contrast of the photo that matters, and is more the way it captures a person as they are.
We are really lucky to have, within our small team, Sophie, an aspiring photographer, who is incredibly talented and is able to take such natural photos.
York and her inhabitants have a lot to offer, and we have Sophie to thank for being able to capture this so beautifully.
We don’t actively seek out interviewees – we will ask anyone and everyone; if people want to get involved, all they have to do is be willing to be responsive to some slightly pushy teenagers.
Having people answer our questions, or even just wish us luck in the future, is what fuels us to carry on. Our aim is for our community to be able to speak its mind and share its thoughts.
Bringing people together
We hope that through this project we can bring the humans of York together, and show that everyone is unique, interesting and unusual in their own way.
Our aim is not popularity, but we are still so grateful for the support we are receiving. We hope that this support will continue and that our project will expand.
Whether you want to talk to us about your love life, your job, or just what you had for lunch, we want to hear from you.
So, if on a Saturday afternoon you see three teenagers holding a camera and a phone set on ‘record’, please approach us – we are more than willing to hear your story.
After all, the aim of Humans of York is to share your words and images with as many people as possible. That is the message of this project; that is our aim.
- See more on the Humans Of York Facebook page
- Sophie, 16, Andrew, 16 and Ada, 15 can be contacted at [email protected]
- More Life stories here