Humans of Hong Kong

Humans of Hong Kong is a photoblog. It is on Facebook and Tumblr, and was created on February 2013 by Sheron Cheung, who is a Hong Kong local. She was inspired by Humans of New York (HONY) and created Humans of Hong Kong in order to record her journey around Hong Kong. Humans of Hong Kong features portraits taken in Hong Kong focusing on people, be it portraits of locals or that of foreigners. The ultimate aim of Sheron was to show the diversity of cultures in Hong Kong.
Before long, there have already been over 600 people following it as of November 2013, and there are around 30 portraits posted on it. Some of them were randomly taken urban citizens snapshots, but most of them were taken with consent. The administrator usually includes a short description conveying stories behind the portraits, any positive messages, or something related to Chinese and Western cultures.
History of “Humans of” (HO) movement
The movement “Humans of” started in November, 2010 by the administrator of “humans of New York (HONY)” Brandon Stanton, a photographer who started off with a goal to create a photo census of New York City. According to Stanton his goal was to take 10,000 photos of New York inhabitants and plot them on a map. However, through gradual changes it has become a social networking trend. As of November 2013 Humans of New York has achieved a following of 1.6 Million on Facebook.
Apart from Facebook, HO movement is in trend on other social networking sites such as Tumblr. The blog is well appreciated on this social network by a large number of people and was highly appreciated by founder and CEO of Tumblr --- “David Karp”.
The photoblog has inspired hundreds of bloggers and as a result many “humans of” blogs have been created on several networking sites. There are blogs about the humans of places, educational institutions and organizations. Some well-known examples include Humans of Karachi, Humans Of India and Humans of Paris.
Purpose of “Humans of Hong Kong” and other “Humans of” Pages
Humans of Hong Kong has been established to bring about the inspiring elements of the Hong Kongers in a casual manner. Humans of Hong Kong shows stories from a random passer-by or hawker to a businessman.“Humans of” pages in general focus on introducing the uniqueness and hidden inspirations of the individuals of a city or of any institution they are made up for.
“Humans of” blogs in general, are utilized as an in-reach platform for the general public to know the true spirit of a place, institution or a country. This trend has acquired a noticeable fan following, comments and likes shows the positive vibes the Facebook and other social networking sites users are getting by visiting such pages.
“Humans of Hong Kong” has been following a trend of putting a caption on the photos taken, like other “Humans of” pages which is usually the depiction of the subject of the photo. The idea of caption has increased the popularity of photoblog because it gives people a chance to learn about the people in the photos.
Here is an example from “Humans of Hong Kong”.
HOHK successfully manages to put together emotions, lighter moments and inspirational stories at one platform at a time, which is the unique thing about this page.
Methodology
The page administrators of ‘’humans of…’’ page are volunteers. Some of them are professional photographers, like the two administrators of Humans of Paris Facebook page. The two artistic directors are Eytan Levi and Marco Hazan. Both of them take the pictures. They do that to make people discover Paris through the perspective of the Parisians. Eytan Levi hopes that it manages to make the people change their stereotypes about Paris.

The page administrator of Humans of Hong Kong is Sheron Cheung. She is an Art student majoring in illustration. Inspired by HONY (Humans of New York), she has decided to document her journey around Hong Kong, taking portraits of locals and foreigners alike. According to Sheron, she wants to show the diversity of western and eastern cultures within one city to the world. Through the Humans of Hong Kong facebook page, Sheron wants to portrait Hong Kong. She has described Humans of Hong Kong as a documentation of the people who live in this beautiful and enriched city.
Humans of HKU
Inspired by Brandon Stanton, Chloe Lam, a student from The University of Hong Kong (HKU), started Humans of HKU, a spin-off Facebook page and joined the “Humans of” movement on September 8, 2013 as a freshman. It focuses on people inside HKU conveying their stories through snapshots and short captions. As of November 3, 2013 the page attained 2,152 likes most of whom are between age of 18-24.
The page is also linked to a Wordpress site that broadens the scope of Humans of Hong Kong . According to Chloe on her site, she is fascinated by the idea of meeting new people. “Meeting new people on campus, a picture a time,” she wrote.
However, though inspired by Brandon Stanton, the page tends to focus on the daily life of school staff and students including undergraduates and postgraduates. While HONY (Humans of New York) focuses on lives of different people having different social status and occupations. The page administrator usually tags people on pictures on Facebook. Hence, people in the picture are accessible by the subscribers of page.

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