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.