Take Two Twins

“I have always been hyper aware of the fact that I am an identical twin; and as any twin knows, this means a lifetime of being compared to your “other half”. But are we halves of the same entity, or two separate independent beings? For as long as I can remember people have compared me and my sister, Madeline, on our hair length, facial features, height, and weight - aspects of our lives that make up our individual appearances. Besides our looks, do we have more similarities than average siblings? Has this obsession with appearances, this constant, inescapable, incomplete sense of comparison affected the way I have developed my own personal identity?

What is it like to be a twin?” is the question we are most often asked. While it is not directly said, what people are really asking is “What is it like to grow up with someone who looks identical to you?” People always comment on our outward appearances: my cheeks are chubbier, her face is rounder; I have a freckle, she does not. In retrospect, this is a unique way to grow up because the comments rarely mention differences beyond appearance. Does being visually similar outweigh who we are? Does being a twin supersede all other aspects of self and identity? And do other sets of twins experience these phenomena as well?  To answer these questions, I must not just be a twin, I have to stand back and analyze what being a twin means. It is an act of self-seeing that necessitates developing ways by which relationships can be examined and persons compared.

Perhaps the most obvious way my twin-hood has affected my individual personality is through my love and passion for photography. My interest in photography developed at a young age, because my sister and I were constantly being photographed. As photography is a manifestation of capturing appearance, I understand the interest in capturing the appearance of two people who look exactly the same. Being in front of the camera so often, I eventually developed an interest in how the camera actually worked, what were its capabilities and potentials, what kinds of images might I capture from behind its lens. Choosing photography as the medium for this body of work is more than just a personal preference… a photograph is, in itself, a doubling, a representation that documents by reproduction....  For my exploration of twinship, I specifically chose the Polaroid as my photographic medium of choice, because of its inability to be duplicated. When creating a copy of a polaroid, your options are to take a photo of the photo, or scan it onto a computer; with duplication there is always degradation. Each polaroid is an object, therefore, even two polaroids of the of the same subject would still be two separate entities. An identical twin can have the same DNA, but two physical bodies each constitute two separate entities… Take, for example, the differences between my sister and myself. We are identical twins, we have identical DNA, so can we be called duplicates? With our outward genetic similarities, like our identical facial structures and hair color, being so easily recognizable there are still so many differences like personalities and interests that become clear and evident after only a brief time spent with us.

I created graphic designs to tie the project together as a whole. Now the candid images representing our unique personalities and interests clearly connect to one another and those connections can be understood based on the content within each image. In addition, the graphic designs create dynamic visual displays of the images that capture the audience's initial attention. By engaging with the work for a period of time, the audience is able to see the connections made by the maps to understand the aspects of Madeline and myself that make us individuals. The individuality and the small size of the physical object that is a polaroid, forces viewers to thoroughly engage with the work to fully see and understand what is going on in each photo and what the overall piece is trying to say.