Instagram has been a worldwide sensation. It is widely used by almost everyone who owns a smart phone. Many people share of photo essays, profiles and short stories. However, no one has ever used this platform to publish an entire novel. Not Until Matilda and Harry.
Meet the debut novel writer "Hey Harry Hey Matilda" and Photographer Rachel Hulin. During the last nine months, she shared stories of how the 30-something fraternal twins navigate the struggles of life and their own complicated relationship. The fraternal twins are Matilda Goodman, a frustrated artist working as a wedding photographer and her brother Harry, an anxiously untenured English professor.
The story started as e-mails between each other became Instagram photo captions. Most of the photos are from Hulin's 15-year career. Sometimes they illustrate the text they have or most of the time just like other posts, it's just the place or mood.
"I love Instagram, I'm fascinated by this idea of everyone turning their lives into these daily visual narratives." Hulin said. She has always been interested in naratives, visuals etc. She worked as a photo editor and writer in New York, where she shot images for Martha Stewart Living and the New York Times.
Six years ago, she began a blog that told the stories of two characters, Harry and Matilda. She played around with it for a while, showing a few friends, but eventually abandoned it to work on other projects. In 2014, Hulin began working on a novel, finishing it in the spring of 2015. After finishing, however, she realized that she could use other medium to tell the story: photos, e-mail accounts, and personal web sites, even. She launched a newsletter and built Matilda a site for her wedding photography business. She also went through her photo archives to invite friends are her principal for her Instagram.
"It's like live streaming a novel," she said. "It's like it became performance art."
This wasn't the first performance on social media that created such noise. Many artists and writers alike tried it and were equally successful. However, no one's done something quite so committed as this. She isn't out there to reinvent anything.
She spent a year working on this novel, and that's what matters to her more than how she's publishing it. It's given her both an audience and experience that is unique and unheard of for the first time writer. "I like waking up and seeing what people have said. It's very fun," Hulin said. "But that one I might post at 3 in the morning."
