OBSESSION- PROGRESSION- CONFESSION

What if you knew there was a place where you could find things of significant value just laying around, or streaming by on a conveyor belt? Well, that is my world.

In one of my side-lines I imbibe in a popular obsession with an American myth. Actually, several concurrent obsessions, mostly inspired by the love of history and the desire for easy money, that last motivation being the same which drove the outlaws and gamblers of the Old West. But this is much less violent. The myths of “Billy the Kid,” Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, and the gambler Doc Holliday, and recent auction sales of Old West photographs for big dollars have fired a renewed interest in history, and fed an endless search for more original photographs of them. And they could be worth millions. Thus, it seems many Old West enthusiasts have convinced themselves they have found another heretofore unknown image of the West’s most famous mythmakers. But their searches and the results of them are sabotaged by inherent problems. The first and highest wall is general skepticism. Cynicism notwithstanding, there are tens of thousands of antique images constantly marketed on the Internet which offer quiet opportunity for the history buff, as they pour over the old tintypes and cabinet cards as if they are rare coins. But it is just another version of “finding a needle in the haystack.” Never to be discouraged, and impossible odds aside, this search has been my passion for over a decade, and has provided lots of entertainment. My obsession is with facial recognition, the human (and profitable) kind, and how old photographs can expand our knowledge of our history. Meanwhile Western collector auctions have made this search a popular pastime for modern day miners of tin-gold. Every time another image is supposedly “found” of Billy the Kid, or some other Western legend, and millions are supposedly paid for them, the searches are renewed with vigor. Never mind that nobody is going to believe you purchased a rare, unpublished photo of a Western legend on Ebay. Never mind the odds against it, or the difficulty in identifying a person in a photograph from 150 years ago- a person who may rarely have ever been photographed in the first place. Never mind that in some cases, there is only one or two known, authenticated photographs of these persons. And they are usually terrible images, damaged and dull and out of focus. In the case of Doc Holliday, historians have passed around and copied and recopied the same bastardized visage for one hundred years. One of the most famous faces in the American West is a doctored copy of a copy of a copy. When the genre of the American “Western” was born around 1900, writers, artists and cinematographers scavenged collections for photographic resources to help authenticate their works. Retired lawmen and outlaws were hired as consultants and actors, often playing themselves in the first Western movies. The images those first film-makers built on created the foundation for our Western lore. And true or not, that lore became fact. As in many cases since, as in the famous line from the 1962 classic, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” And they did. And we ate it up. There is very slim proof to authenticate a surprising number of famous faces, thought to be famous Western characters or outlaws. In many cases, there is just one photograph traditionally offered up as an authentic portrait. As files and archives have been ravaged over the years, new portraits have emerged, often creating more confusion when, under scrutiny, they did not match. Still publishers were happy to print the local legends, revealing new likenesses of Sam Bass, John Wesley Hardin, Frank and Jesse James, and others, further muddying the waters of time. What is always interesting is the preponderance of finds of a few of the most famous persons, ones worth the highest amount of dollars, while most of the others never seem to turn up. Perhaps the biggest myth is the scarcity of photography in the Old West. Endless waves of tintype photography rise to the surface every week on Internet auctions from the western half of the United States. Many were probably made there, if clothing and hats are any indication. Even the Texas Rangers used a tintype photographer in the 1870’s to ID criminals. About the same time the Pinkertons established their famous “Rogues Gallery” in Chicago. For thirty years frontier photographers invaded every state in the west, capturing valuable photographic records of western history. And obligingly, lawmen eagerly collected images of the most sought-after criminals. But a criminal’s career was typically short, and Sheriff’s drawers got full of obsolete clues. And then the West was won. What would become historic treasures were disposed of, and sometimes were scooped up by far-sighted deputies and family members. Time passed and the dusky images found their way again to the bottom of drawers, family albums, and some went to university collections. Some lost their identity. And that is how some might anonymously slide by in an Internet auction. Clueless descendants, ambivalent about their family histories, sell historic treasures with no idea about what they have. Often their own family stories should raise interest, but they would rather have the immediate money from the garage sale. When recent research turned up some supposedly new and authentic images of Doc Holliday, few folks bothered to notice that they did not match the original famous face, published ad infinitum. In my own search for rare Americana, I have “discovered” my own Doc Holliday doppelgangers. Obviously not all of the “finds,” whether mine or others being touted could be anything more than wishful thinking. But what if one or two were what they appear to be? After collecting a number of possible valuable images to history, I realized that I had to find a way to authenticate my photographs, at least to my own satisfaction, and something more accurate than the less discriminating “facial ID” computer programs. The bar for a match is fairly low for most computer ID programs, and therefore there are suddenly many photographs emerging as supposed matches for famous historical persons. Being a professional artist, and somewhat proficient with Photoshop, as well as being a devoted history researcher, I was determined to figure out something that would provide me the confidence in my discoveries that I needed. More to the point, I needed a way to screen images BEFORE I PURCHASED THEM! Seeing a likeness was no problem, many doppel-seachers can do that. But few “finders” can prove mathematically that they have found anything important. After a portrait passes the facial similarity, historical context and fashion screenings, it will still be anybody’s guess. Computer analysis is woefully inadequate. AI and its cronies are unwilling or unable to provide anything more than superficial comparisons. Face ID will draw upon overall and irrelevant similarities, face shape and even expressions, while AI absorbs all Internet knowledge, and often repeats what urban legend says is probably true. And with increasing “information” available, much of it flawed, and sometimes contradictory, the more confused and unreliable it will be. Poor resolution in the originals is a big problem, and they often need enhancement and cleaning up to be useful for exact comparisons. Given the vagueness of some originals, there will always be reasonable doubt. The acceptance of “close” as being adequate is another fallacy. Given all of the possible failures in the system, nothing below a 90% match should be considered. Therefore, image hunters often tout finds with “high percentages” of authenticity which are merely mediocre doppelgangers. Frequently there are scores of spurious “rare Old West” images being offered on online auctions. I eventually developed my own, quite objective system. I call it Q-5. That’s an abbreviation for “five-point quintangulation.” Now I can screen Victorian faces in minutes and know with 95% certainty, that they are either true historical finds or mere look-alikes. My threshold for an acceptable match is 93%. Given differences in age and health, even two photographs of the same person will not always line up perfectly. A 100% match is almost impossible. I have an admittedly subjective way of grading my images, subtracting points starting from 95% (my highest score for obvious matches) for every misalignment, subtracting a point for every incompatible facial feature, using the original as a base. Ears may move up or down depending on the angle of the photograph, but they should be the same size and shape. If shoulders are visible, they too must reflect the body type of the original. Hairlines can rise with age, but must make sense depending on age. A man does not recover his old hairline. He generally parts his hair in the same place. Facial hair can evolve, especially with criminals, but beards make identification hard because they obscure important features like lips, jaws and chins. Generally, lips and chins get smaller with age, but ears, foreheads and noses get a little bigger, and these things must be taken into account. But in my way of identification, focusing on the most unchangeable features, it does not take long to disqualify a candidate. Every face has a unique design, based on measurable relationships between facial features. Yes, God made every individual unique and special, a one of a kind. Even twins are not exactly the same. And doppelgangers lose a great deal of their mystery when carefully analyzed. The mathematical relationships between the elements of every face are special and rarely replicated. Add to that the shape of ears, color of eyes and hair, length of neck, type of eyelids and arch of the eyebrows, and you find that faces are like fingerprints. And actual look-alikes are extremely rare. Starting with the eyes, I carefully pinpoint a minimum of five, but as many as a dozen key points on the “original” face, each of which has a distinct and exact mathematical relationship with all of the other features on the face, and superimpose those points on the face in question. Once the irises of the eyes are marked, they become the key to a match. The variance of the eyes and the distance between them will sabotage 99 % of the candidates. ALL of the points- eyes, nostrils, upper lip, chin, (that’s actually 6) must line up very well, or it is a failure. There can be no exceptions. Sure, the age of the person must be considered. As people age, they lose teeth and this raises the chin, and the jaw skin might sag a little. Still, the mathematical relationship between the various features of the face change very little, especially between the eyes and the nostrils and upper lip. No matter how old a person is, these relationships, based on skull structure, change very little. The distance between the irises will never change, unless a person’s eyeballs shrink significantly, and this would be extremely rare. My Q-5 measuring technique disqualified some of my favorite “finds,” more than I wished, but it as also solidified other finds which I hope will make them more valuable. For me this journey began with some positive ID tintype purchases I made years ago. Unfortunately, the successes gave me too much confidence, and I was soon swimming in delusion. I bought too many doppelgangers before I began to wonder about the future of my growing collection. It was worthless without some proof. Nobody was as observant or as lucky as I thought was. I did not want to be another wishful thinker, wishing somebody believed my discoveries. I was eventually ready to retire many of my finds as mere look-alikes, in order to authenticate some of them. Here are some of my finds. But I start with a study of Doc Holliday. It is to illustrate the challenge to all historians, who love the lore of the West. The main problem is that the recent finds of Doc Holliday do not compare well with the original, much tampered-with historic photo most often attributed as him. If one or both of the later finds are him, then what do we make of the “original”? My Q-5 comparison helps to reveal the significant dissimilarities. Did Holliday have a pointed or squared chin? A broad or narrow forehead? Still, the key features line up well, in fact earning my highest score, (I never score anything above 95%) yet the ears alone would have disqualified them. Probably no one knows for sure the source of the “original” portrait of Doc Holliday. Should it be grandfathered in, since it was produced and published during a time when memories were fresh and there were firsthand associates to authenticate it? Or do we abandon it for “better” scholarship? Bottom line, they cannot all be Doc Holliday. At best, the original is iconic, but the least reliable, given the obvious retouching and “restoration” done to it, illustrated well by all of the varying versions. Poor photography often necessitated artistic enhancement. And in the process, it was typical to make the ears smaller on sitters, eyes larger and more expressive, the hair perfect. Might early photographers or publishers have doctored their print of Holliday for clarity or dramatic impact? Most likely. My Q-5 technique has found similar discrepancies with other famous photographs, and proves that publishing and law enforcement standards were lacking for sure. It has also lent credibility to other photos which have otherwise raised considerable controversy. It also renders 95% of modern discoveries as tin-gold fever. I have fared a little better, with perhaps 40% of my finds surviving the scrutiny of Q-5. Perhaps my greatest finds have been so obvious there is no proof necessary, when there are several famous persons found in the same photograph, and these persons not only knew each other, but might well have posed together. What are the odds of such doppelgangers, all the correct respective ages, finding one another, at the right time in history to pose? Still, the finds are even more impressive when all of the persons recognized in the photo pass the Q-5 test. I call them my Grand Slams. Tin-gold seekers should not be discouraged by my exactitude. They are in the hunt, so they are already ahead of the game. But first they must put aside their delusions. I would never have found mine had I (1) not believed that I could and would find them, and (2) had failed to search diligently almost every day. And (3) had a process to eliminate doppelgangers. Intriguing or coincidental similarities are not proof. A drooping mustache is not automatically Wyatt Earp. An insolent snarl with big ears is not necessarily Billy the Kid. Unfortunately, if you want to add to our history, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. Mathematical, geometric alignment is the basis for that proof. My knowledge of history, Victorian fashion, antique forms of photography and the general identities of the West’s most famous personalities was invaluable. But it also took something completely untrainable: An imagination capable of recognizing a person or persons from an angle or a situation never before seen. And a creativity to devise a scientific method to solidify my hunches. That is where the luck finally kicked in. I think it was Hipshot, the beloved gunfighter in the old Rick O’Shay comic strip, who once quipped, “You might notice, it’s the most diligent hunter that always seems the luckiest.” Or something like that. It is true that the “camera does not lie.” Nor do photographs. But many photograph collectors lie to themselves. Nobody can argue with a 12-point buck, or a Clovis arrowhead. But the image hunter must be more critical, maintaining fierce objectivity. And must find a way to prove his finds, beyond the shadow of doubt- and the deceptive light which passes through a camera lens.

Preface

When it comes to Victorian history, there are few surprises anymore. It was all written long ago, then thoroughly revisited before this Century began. The lies were dispensed with, the warm glow of nostalgia freeze-dried, the truth finally brandished like the flag of rebellion. BUT I FOUND THIS...

Some smart aleck thinks he has an idea. Facts are challenged and traditions ignored… and sacred cows heartlessly butchered like baby veal. But then, that is why we love history. Just when everything gets nailed down, controversy rips through our comfort zones like a straight-line wind. Relax. I don’t want to upset the applecart. But not too long ago, my decade-long search brought me to this GRAND SLAM (above)... and I believe it teaches us some things we did not know. I'll let you try to figure that out, and I will come back to that later.

But for now I’m going to have some fun. I’m calling myself “the DoppelCatcher,” my word for someone obsessed with faces, comparing them, yes, finding doppelgangers, and sharing them. That's our former president and commedian George Carlin. I'll let you figure out which is which.

I’ve been doing this for about a decade. Most of my spare time has been spent on this crazy quest, all because I discovered that I had a good eye for such things. Online auctions like Ebay made the hunt easy and profitable, since the world is full of unidentified photographs, and unappreciative persons who want to get rid of them. When I realized that I could spot an unrecognized doppelganger almost every day on the Internet, hunting them became my passion.

It’s Open Season, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. And it’s as easy a scrolling with your computer mouse. But then, you have to be willing to scroll past about a thousand unprepossessing mugs to find one. Like hunting that needle in the haystack. And your reward is that you have to buy the thing, and it might be expensive if the seller prized it for a completely unrelated reason. The reason is usually their nagging suspicion that the image is SOMEBODY, they just can’t place them.

Outlaw Pearl Hart, the "Last Stagecoach Robber," brandished her pistols on an old post card, but nobody seemed to recognize her on Ebay. But I did.

This was one of the very first dops I acquired, but after years of research, I decided it is just that, a doppelganger, dangit. I’ve been a hunter all of my life. First it was mice in my mother’s kitchen cabinet. Then I moved up to rabbits and squirrels. Later my cousin taught me how to “flounder,” a Texas and Gulf Coast tradition of gigging flounders at night by hunting them with a lantern. I’ve shot doves, ducks and deer, but none gave me the thrill of a great DOPPELGANGER! And every once in a while, one that might actually be a famous person out of history!

Introduction

We all think we have a seen one. A “look-alike.” A dead-ringer. Usually, more scrutiny reveals a person who merely fleetingly reminded us of someone.

Actually finding one is a long shot, for sure. Studies insist that there is only a one -in-a-Trillion chance that you will find a true look-alike. When and if you do, it is a big deal.

These ladies do "look alike"- but there are differences which keep them from being true doppelgangers. The one on the left has a toothier smile, a broader, shorter nose and slanted eyes. Compare the nose bridge. Compare the gums exposed when smiling. This is why I score them at only 90% alike... I'll explain how I establish that judgement below.

As an artist, one who has studied anatomy and life drawing; one who has painted portraits professionally, and one who thinks and relates and expresses himself in imagery the way a physicist uses numbers, I have a natural advantage in identifying doppelgangers. My lifelong love of history gave me a wealth of visual clues in my mental hard drive, so unfortunately doppelgangers have become an obsession and sometimes a curse, as they began to surface in online auctions. And each time I wondered… could it be?

My Obsession

I also have a life-long love of photography, and especially antique images. When I run across a great old tintype, and it features a doppelganger to my mind’s eye, I am hooked! Over the past ten years, this has occurred many times, resulting in many acquisitions, and triggering many hours of study and research in an impossible saga of authentication of them. Some are just for my own sastisfaction- that they actually almost exist!

Our eyes are very accurate judges, but they are often deceived by our desire to witness a surprising similarity, because it is fun and intriguing. Look-alikes have entertained many readers over the decades, thanks to Dickens, Dostoesvky, Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe. There are scores of books about the subject in the bookstores today- all built around the assumption or myth that somewhere in the world is a person that looks just like you! And we already wonder where we might find them, and what they are doing. Sort of a twin-envy fantasy. And now the Internet is rife with such examples, supported by supposed “Face ID.”

Newsflash, so-called facial recognition technology is not reliable. Its burden of proof is low and has encouraged the misconception that doppelgangers are common. It does not adequately consider race, correct period clothing, loss of teeth, weight loss or gain, or other markers which my investment in my collection demands. But still it grew. And grew.

Five-Point Quintangulation (Q-5)

Our eyes don't lie, but our brains can be fooled. Consider this. Have you ever noticed that you can recognize most people you know from behind? Just the back of the head is enough to tell. When we run into someone who looks like someone we know, and we go up to them, most of the time we immediately realize our mistake. It was the hair, or the posture, or just the general description. Then we say, "I'm sorry, I thought you were someone I know..." But if the real person was standing next to them, there would be no confusion, only a laugh at the similarities. Very few persons have ever encountered a true doppelganger, where they had to argue about the identity of the person, who insisted they were not who they were mistaken for. But doppelgangers do exist... I've processed and scored a few favorites on the Internet so you can see how rare it is.

So discovering a 140 year-old tintype of a person who "looks like somebody," as in EXACTLY, from THE RIGHT ERA IN history is not that common.

After a while, as my collection became burdensome, I devised a precise, mathematical method using Photoshop to satisfy myself that my “finds” were just that and not mysterroneous (my word) investments. And some indeed were.

I’ll show them all if you have the patience. But to my astonishment, a majority of my doppelgangers passed my fairly high burden of proof. I call it the “Q-5” process and will explain it briefly. I isolate a minimum of five unchangeable points on a face, then superimpose them with exactness on the doppelganger. I require a near 95% alignment to declare a success. (Due to many variations, especally the camera angle, it will very rarely be 100%) Then with any luck, odds are it is most probably the famous person in question. And my Q-5 process is not an easy one to gain that declaration.

Internet auctions are lousy with false claims, built on weak similarities, as sellers try to market their amazing finds and get a million bucks for yet another photograph of Billy the Kid. Hope springs eternal! Right here I offer any doppelcatcher out there the FREE SERVICE of putting their image through my process… if they want to know the truth. Just e-mail a decent-sized image and I will return it within a week, if not much sooner. If you’re like me, you hate being delusional, and you hate wasting your time and energy (and money!).

Is THAT Who I Think IT IS?

This collection started many years ago with mostly wishful thinking and some uncanny look-alikes found in antique shops. But after I discovered one online auction seller marketing tens of thousands of images (Literally!), some which were unquestionably famous persons in history, the catchings began in earnest.

I purchased this early 1900's cabinet card at a antique shop, and researched for years, believing it was Butch Cassidy and his gang with Etta Place. To this day my convictions have been mixed. This was the typical result in much of my "doppelcatching."

Martha Maxwell, famous in her own time as Colorado's leading naturalist and taxidermist. My first "for sure" acquisition was easy, a famous huntress who was a pioneer in American taxidermy. She was unidentified, but she was unusual, and collectors went after her because of the gun. Holding a handful of chipmunks in one hand and a shotgun in the other, she unfortunately brought a good price for the seller anyway. After buying the image, I delved into her and her career, and a deluge of discoveries followed. Outside of my woman, my Faith and my career, this turned out to be the major quest of my life!

That first seller seemed perplexingly uninterested in his old photos, had minimal knowledge about them or their history, and no clue of their importance. And he could not be enticed into much discussion about them. Perhaps by inheritance, he acquired what must have been a massive Victorian era publisher’s photography library. But it had been disastrously conveyed without any identifications. No story, no provenance. I could never know for sure, but I delved into his mountain of tin anyway, relishing in just the pure fun of playing history detective! I was recovering from a heart attack, and it was a perfect distraction during my recovery. It's been a blast!

THE ARTISTS

The Artists - My studies in Art History in college paid off somewhat when familiar faces started showing up in my Internet “honey-hole.” I was not as familiar with the French Impressionists as I was about to become, but I knew Edouard Manet when I saw him. And Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas. In a bizarre, if not impossible alignment of the stars, eventually fifty tintypes emerged featuring Victorian era artists, or to skeptics, their look-alikes. All of them without context. All from one seller.

American ex-patriot and accomplished watercolorist, Edward Darley Boit and prominent American Impressionist Childe Hassam pose with two well-connected French girls... and artist's models; Julie Manet (center) and Genevieve Mallarme.

This was a veritable cascade of coincidences, or a valuable record to Art History. Were they doppelgangers? Surely it was my strong imagination which turned these mundane photographs into tin gold. It was absurd. How could so many unpublished images of famous artists be found together, and unbeknownst to the person who owned them? But then, how could so many doppelgangers be found together as well? It’s not like they naturally hang out together. I had no time to question the veracity of my suppositions, but instead entered into a deep study of these artists and their associations. Because I was discovering not only doppelgangers of famous artists, but of their families and friends as well. To buy or not to buy? A tintype of Berthe Morisot with her family, labeled “four people posing” was selling for a pittance, and HISTORY MUST BE SAVED! I searched the Internet, bought art books… and one by one, purchased this amazing collection.

Pierre Auguste Renoir seated, (I believe) with his very secret baby son and two young women... Berthe Morisot, (acting as an adoption facilitator?) and his model and the child's mother, Lise Trehot. Little Pierre, (not to be confused with Renoir's oldest legitimate son) was given to a Foster home and never heard from again. Trehot and Renoir had a daughter later, again out of wedlock, but whom Renoir was notably, yet secretly faithful to. Trehot is not believed to have ever shown interest in either of the children.

A dozen books later, and many purchases, I was convinced, I had made the most important discovery in Art History in the century! At the same time these rare images were surfacing, so were tintypes of more doppelgangers, of American artists, actors, writers and even Pinkerton detectives. Then a First Lady, or her look-alike, and some prominent Women’s Suffragists. They could not all possibly be real, but I had to buy them and find out. If only a few were what I thought they were, they would justify the expense. If nothing else, I would have amassed the world’s most amazing doppelganger collection! And then I discovered a secret weapon.

PAY ATTENTION!

PAY ATTENTION! Researching, I discovered a valuable asset inherent on the Internet. Whenever you “Google” something in image search, the world-wide web drags up EVERYTHING associated with that subject, in no particular order. Only that the more something is viewed, the closer to the top it rises. As you search for acceptable images to compare your newfound famous face, Google is showing you everyone they ever knew, their relatives, friends, enemies, fans, whomever. It seems random… but in my case, the Internet was inadvertently giving me visual clues which helped me recognize other faces being sold by the same seller; ones which otherwise, I would never have recognized.

Alice Hoschede, Monet's second wife.

So, when I saw an image I thought to be Claude Monet, (or his doppelganger) and searched Google for similar angles for comparison, Google was showing me his wives, children and associates. Incredibly, this helped me identify many more images, which were not that valuable, but precious to history. Sadly, because my research sometimes took so long, I failed to acquire some tintypes before they were sold, and the one of Monet was one of them! But I was able to purchase tintypes of his wives and children!

Little Michel Monet, an irresistible subject! The similarity of this tintype to Michel's portrait below suggests that this, and probably the other French tintypes were collected by a trusted friend, perhaps also the photograppher, for a scrapbook of some kind about the "Impressionists." Who else could manage to assemble such an intimate photographic record? Edgar Degas was one such associate, not only famous for his Impressionist pastels, but also known by his frioends for his passion for photographing. He made a habit of turning every social situation into a photo shoot. It must be assumed that Monet used this tintype photograph (or a copy of it) as a resource in the creation of the portrait of Michel below. Or this is just a doppelganger of Michel, which found itself among all the other doppelgangers of French artists and their families. When donkeys fly!

As my favorite actor, Tom Selleck on Magnum P.I. always said. “I know what you are thinking.” You are thinking, “This is crazy, this story is beyond luck or coincidence, it has to be a big cock and bull story, and it’s wasting my time… Maybe.” And I would agree with you. But I have just lived it. I’m like the Apostle Peter at Pentecost- “… we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” Here's Tom compared to his Victorian dop.

Eventually, after you see this collection, and appreciate the Q-5 technique, and consider the one-in-a-Trillion chance of locating a true doppelganger… you will probably not consider most these faces to be those of doppelgangers. The odds are against that. But as far as accepted authentication is concerned, that is the only claim I can make.