This project begins and ends with a simple truth: we are, at our core, exactly what these two words declare. Simply Human. Our humanity is not divided by color, gender, sexuality, class, or circumstance — it runs beneath all of it, older and more fundamental than any category we have inherited or imposed. It is the one thing we cannot take from each other, and the one thing that connects us without condition. That connection is not sentiment. It is fact — and it is time we lived as though we knew it.

When I look out at the world, I try to see each person as a brother or sister — not in spite of our differences, but beyond them. Awareness, tolerance, respect, and understanding are not lofty ideals; they are the natural current of our humanity, waiting to be summoned. I believe that love — the most basic and most enduring human force — will ultimately prevail.

This documentary project began in 2018 with the LGBTQ community, people I have long counted among my closest friends and family. My motivation was simple: to show up, to be helpful, and to offer my photography as a platform and a form of witness. But as I worked, I saw clearly that the margins were wider than I had acknowledged. I expanded the project to include BIPOC communities, refugees, people experiencing homelessness, and people with disabilities — and in each encounter, I was met with generosity, openness, and an eagerness to be seen. I asked each to write a few words about their story.

I was raised inside a culture of sexism, racism, and homophobia. As a working-class white person, my world was largely bounded by the ethnic neighborhood I grew up in, and I absorbed its prejudices the way a child absorbs everything — without question. Unlearning that inheritance is slow, ongoing work. It requires intellectual honesty, emotional courage, and a psychological willingness to be changed. At its deepest, it is a spiritual shift: from a life organized around fear to one oriented toward love. To be truly inclusive I feel it appropriate to address white privilege, and to be open toward a greater balance of reasonable conservative representation.

Because I care about humanity, this work has become my path toward social justice. It is, in part, a project of my own healing. But more than that, Simply Human is my way of honoring the people I’ve been privileged to photograph — of affirming what we share beneath every difference. Human dignity is not a negotiable principle. For too many people, being who they are remains a daily struggle, and there is no honest excuse for refusing to see that, or for refusing to move toward one another with genuine care.

My hope is that these portraits will prompt people to look more carefully — at others, and most certainly at ourselves.