What do you value most? I found out by asking people to imagine their house on fire.
A few years ago, I started a personal project I called The ONE Project. The premise is simple, even if the question underneath it isn't: your house is on fire. You have time to run in and grab exactly one thing. No people, no pets - just an object. What do you grab?
I've asked that question to dozens of people since then, and I photograph them with whatever they choose. Some of the answers have been extraordinary. A quilt. A set of guitar picks from a Father's Day years ago. A childhood camera that belonged to a friend who's now a legend in Texas photography circles. A letter from a father, kept all these years. A children's book with a single line in it that meant more than the rest of the book combined.
But here's the part I didn't expect going in: a clear majority of people, independently, without any prompting from me, landed on the same answer.
Photos.
Not jewelry. Not a childhood toy. Not something valuable in the traditional sense. Photos - of people, of moments, of a life already lived. Person after person, thinking through the same imagined fire, kept arriving at the same instinct.
I get it, honestly. When it was my turn to do my own ONE portrait, I chose a photo too - one my wife and I took on our first date back in college. If I only had time to grab one thing, that's probably still what I'd reach for.
Here's the problem, though. If half the project became "person holding a photo," it stops being a study of what people value and starts being a repeated answer. The variety is what makes the project work - each portrait is a small window into someone specific, not a pattern. So I made a rule for myself early on: I'd allow a photo or two into the series, and no more. When someone's instinct led them there, I'd ask them to sit with the question a little longer. If a photo genuinely wasn't an option - what's the next thing?
That's usually where the real stories started. The letter came out because a photo would've been the obvious, safe answer, and pushing past it gave me something so much more specific.
I don't think any of this says anything bad about photography, since I make my living doing exactly what people instinctively reach for. If anything, I think it says something true about what people actually value, underneath whatever they'd normally tell you if you asked them outright. Ask someone what matters most to them and they might give you a thoughtful, considered answer. Ask them what they'd grab from a burning house, and you get the real one, unfiltered and immediate.
Almost every time, the real one was a photograph.
I don't know what to do with that fact except notice it. But it's stayed with me since - that when everything else falls away, most of us aren't reaching for what we own. We're reaching for the proof that we loved someone, and that they were here.
