BBC and other major news outlets recently covered Montreal-based photographer François Brunelle, who tracks down real world doppelgängers and photographs them. These people are unrelated and are total strangers. Brunelle even finds look-alikes of different sexes. Since he gained publicity through the media, people approach him for portraits if they have located a look-alike. Bored Panda:
All images are © François Brunelle and are sourced from Bored Panda and the Daily Mail, where you can see more twin photos; the Mail lists the names of the subjects and the dates of the photographs.Canadian photographer François Brunelle proves this in this twin photo series “I’m not a look-alike!”, where his almost identical models are not even related. The artist has been studying the human face since 1968, when he first started of as a photographer at the age of 18. He is now set to make 200 photos of the look-alike couples and publish them as a portrait book.
This makes an excellent object lesson in probability. Too many people succumb to the rhetorical blurring of the distinction between the improbable and the impossible, arguing that if something is unlikely then it cannot happen. The measurement of probability itself is founded on the premise that likelihood only ever exists in degrees. The pairs of people in these photos show a similarity we don't expect to see without a genetic link (or surgery, I suppose), and that expectation isn't unreasonable based on our experience in the world. But we have to learn that it IS unreasonable to expect that these coincidences CAN'T happen. A one-in-a-million event in a world of 6 or 7 billion should, logically, be happening to thousands of us.
ReplyDeleteHi pblfsda, yeah, if anything genealogical and genetic research show that these things are not uncanny. I wish the conspiracy theorists would understand that fact.
DeleteRegarding the chances of finding someone of similar appearance, it may have something to do with movements of key populations. I'm reminded of the National Geographic DNA test kit:
http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/browse/productDetail.jsp?productId=2001246
Even if there is no genetic basis to this photographer's work, perhaps it results from the fact that humans fall into roles. I don't know if you have seen Matt Groening's Life in Hell series, where he often listed the 25 types of high school students, the 9 types of boyfriends, the types of fathers, college professors, etc etc. I think he did recognize something there, something that an airforce brat friend of mine noticed, that no matter where you go, you keep meeting the same people over and over again.
I once was shown a photo of a woman a few yearsyounger than me who was a native of Germany. I am a native Californian of German descent on one side of the family. Anyway, she was/is a dead ringer for me. It was eerie.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Anon. Yes this has happened to me a couple of times, where someone stops me and thinks I'm someone else, and then finally realizes they are talking to a total stranger.
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