Picturing the Strange and Surreal World of Duos and Dopplegangers

Humans have long had a fascination with duos and doubles. The ancient Egyptians believed that every person had a ka, a spirit version of themselves. In German folklore, meeting your double—your dopplegänger—was a sinister occurrence that lead to death. And then of course there is the more literal double, the twin. Around the world there are yearly twin festivals, including, suitably, in Twinsburg, Ohio.

This is the subject of a new photo book, Two of a Kind. The book grew from a blog by Sandrine Kerfante titled Twin-niwt, where she collected “images on the themes of reflection, doubles, symmetry and twins.” As she writes in the introduction, “These shots are the witnesses to the great paradox of the double: one after another they beckon, offering both reconciliation and opposition.”

In one photo, two sets of jeans-clad legs dangle over a beige wall. In another, a pair of horse-shaped balloons hover together on a ceiling, as though surveying the room below. These images have been drawn from photographers all around the world, but they all share a slightly surreal quality. AO has a selection from this an intriguing ode to clones and doubles.

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