Many of you are surely familiar with photographer Brandon Stranton’s wildly popular project, Humans of New York (HONY). With 1.6 million Instagram followers, close to 8.9 million Facebook fans, and a bestselling book, this photographic anthology of sorts offers glimpses into the lives of countless New Yorkers spanning across seemingly all spectra—economic status, race, age, religion, language, and more.

The idea is simple: Stranton’s photograph of a person or small group of people is accompanied by a snippet of the conversation he had with them. This blurb becomes the caption to the photo. From an answer to a probing question he has asked to just a few short, unprecedented words, the caption could really be anything. My favorites are: “If you could say anything to a group of people, what would it be?” and “Today in microfashion.” Regardless, the results are astounding. From profound, to touching, to downright hilarious, HONY offers everything.

I often think very highly of the people in Stranton’s photographs. They have such lovely things to say and wisdom beyond what one may perceive. The other day, though, I realized something important. I had known it in the back of my head all along. These people are me. They have childhoods and middle school and favorite ice cream flavors and pet peeves and quirky habits. They are normal people. If I was walking down the street in New York City and ran into Brandon Stranton, I could be the next feature on HONY’s Instagram. So could anyone I passed on the street today. So could any of my friends or family members. 

HONY does an incredible thing: it showcases people’s minds. Photography can say a lot, but only so much. Stranton’s work extracts the marrow of humanity and sets it in plain sight. Though NYC may seem to be a sort of “small fish in a big pond” scene, HONY makes the fish seem bigger and the pond seem smaller. To me, it is a constant reminder that everyone has worth regardless of what the eye perceives.  HONY is set in New York, but the idea is the same in any location. 

As a certain Doctor would say, “A person’s a person no matter how small."