Human-Centered Digital Documentary Projects
A selection of multimedia documentary projects from various sources that center human stories and lived experience through film, journalism, photography, animation, podcasting, and other creative formats.
Last Men Standing (SF Chronicle Project)
Last Men Standing is a multimedia documentary project produced by the San Francisco Chronicle exploring the life stories of eight men in San Francisco who were diagnosed with HIV in the 1980s and outlived the AIDS crisis. The project explores the impact of surviving when so many others in their generation was lost, and how their illness affected relationships, work, money, and mental health.
The website, which features photography, video, and articles, supports the feature-length documentary film which has screened at LGBTQ+ film festivals around the world; it was written, produced and directed by Erin Brethauer and Tim Hussin (see trailer). The full film can be viewed on Vimeo.
Trailer: Last Man Standing (2015)
New to the Parish (Irish Times Column)
New to the Parish is an Irish Times column by journalist Sorcha Pollak, profiling the migration stories of people now living in Ireland. It reflects on individuals who have come to Ireland for myriad reasons: marriage, education, work, or asylum. Sorcha Pollak is also the author of the 2018 book New to the Parish, an anthology of extended personal stories which also situates them into a global context.
COVID-19: American Experiences (Library of Congress Flickr Album)
The Library of Congress (LOC) has set up a collaborative public documentation project that invites users to register to their Flickr group, and contribute up to 5 images. “The images should represent how the pandemic has impacted your life, your community, or life in the United States at large,” as quoted on their page. It now has nearly 1000 images from American citizens, exploring the impact of the pandemic on public and private life.
Life on Hold (Al Jazeera Video Project)
Life on Hold is an interactive documentary series produced by Al Jazeera, set up as ten web-based videos examining the lives of individual Syrian refugees living in Lebanon in 2015. Displaced by the brutal Syrian war, over 1.5 million refugees now reside in Lebanon (as of 2020). Life on Hold looks at some of their stories in 2015, including losses and the journey out of Syria, and includes archival footage and reportage into the background of the conflict (see the trailer for the project below). Al Jazeera Documentary Project, 2015
Trailer: Life on Hold (2015)
The Human Condition (Web Series)
The Human Condition is a 5-part web series composed of 10 minute films, produced by Collective Films from Dublin, Ireland. Four members of Collective drove across America in the Summer of 2018, landing in locales from New York City, to New Orleans, to Los Angeles and Death Valley, CA, connecting with individuals who were focused on healing through their life work. In Collective’s words, “Many of these people have touched millions with their work and have evolved many times in their lives through their work. The Human Condition is an investigation into human purpose and healing” [view more about the project here].
Chapter 1: The Human Condition (2020)
Skid Row Stories (Photoblog)
Skid Row Stories is a one-person photoblog series that centres and uplifts people living in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, an area located east of downtown LA. Skid Row is known to have one of the largest stable populations of homeless people in the United States from the 1930s on. The blog was started as a social media project by a professional photographer as a way to humanise the marginalised populations living there, using interviews of their life stories and poignant portrait photography in a Humans of New York-style methodology. Many more stories are featured on the Facebook page.
Credit: screenshot, Skid Row Stories website
StoryCorps (Podcast/Animation)
The StoryCorps is a NPR-funded documentation project formatted as a dialogue, usually between just two people, telling a story from their lives and having a meaningful discussion. In their own words, “StoryCorps’ mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.” Its unique methodology began as a ‘storybooth’ in Grand Central Station, New York City, and then evolved to include a travelling ‘mobilebooth’ to record and document stories across America on the road. The format is primarily podcast but includes a select few as animated videos (as below).
Daddy's Lessons | This Land (2020), a StoryCorps animation
Humans of Dublin (Photoblog)
Humans of Dublin is a popular photoblog project based in the Irish capital of Dublin by Peter Varga. Started in 2014, Varga has since published a book of the same name, gained a massive online following, and has often partnered with local organisations to respond to social causes and movements. As quoted by Varga himself, the Humans of Dublin project “aim[s] to raise awareness through real life stories.”
Credit: screenshot, Humans of Dublin website
Humans of Karachi (Photoblog)
Humans of Karachi is a social media portrait photoblog, focused on people living in Karachi, Pakistan, by photojournalist Khaula Jamil. It was inspired by Humans of New York, as many photo documentation projects cropped up in response to its popularity, and explores the spectrum of lived experience of the regular people in Karachi: merchants, children, doctors, teachers, and more.
