The Webster Family.

I have known Rachel Webster since we were both kids in the same congregation. She went to Fife High School. I went to Federal Way. Our families overlapped at church on Sundays. I knew her family the way you know other families when you are growing up in a small church — in passing, with affection, without understanding very much.

In the fall of 2017, Rachel asked me if I would photograph her family for Dwarfism Awareness Month. Three of the four Websters — Rachel, Chris, and Nancy — are little people. I said yes before I knew what I was saying yes to.

What I learned, in the making of the essay, is that there is a kind of conversation you can have only with a camera in your hands. You can sit in a kitchen and ask a question and wait, and the answer comes in the form of a face changing. It comes in the form of a small detail you weren’t looking for. It comes in the form of Rachel’s mother saying something quiet to her father across the table, the way long-married people do, and the world rearranging itself around what was said.

The essay paired the photographs with the Websters’ own words. About being stared at in public. About the kindness of strangers. About what it’s like to grow up in a family where short is the regular height. About the school bullying. About the moments their dwarfism is the most important fact in the room, and the moments — most moments, actually — when it isn’t.

Awesome Inventions picked it up. So did Federal Way Mirror and Bored Panda. The photographs were exhibited at Northwest University the following month, where I was finishing my MBA.

What I want to say about the project, even now, is that the Websters did the work of it. I was there with a camera. They were there with their lives. The essay is theirs. I am only grateful they let me carry it with mine.