home » Statements » Contemporary artists, photographers and sculptors from all over the world. I'm not the same: François Brunel's amazing world of doubles I love the hard surface of the panels, and to create my hyper-realistic paintings, I use several thin layers of paint

Contemporary artists, photographers and sculptors from all over the world. I'm not the same: François Brunel's amazing world of doubles I love the hard surface of the panels, and to create my hyper-realistic paintings, I use several thin layers of paint

My job is to create stories through images. My camera and Photoshop are my biggest allies.

"My job is to create stories through images. My camera and Photoshop are my most big allies. Photography has been my best friend and passion since I was a teenager. I never thought that what I enjoy doing the most in my life could become my way of life. Still. I can say that I dedicate myself to photography with all the passion that I have, because I cannot live without it and it would be very difficult for me to be happy without a camera in my hands.

I like the solid surface of the panels, and to create my hyper-realistic paintings, I use several thin layers of paint.

"All my paintings are done with acrylic paints on wood panels. I like the hard surface of the panels and to create my hyper realistic paintings I use several thin coats of paint. I also use a combination of stamps acrylic paints"Golden" and "Liquitex" and very small brushes! I press hard on the brushes, and therefore they do not retain the necessary rigidity for a long time. I can spend anywhere from two weeks to a month on one painting, depending on the size and details.

Do you believe that each of us has a doppelgänger? But the photographer Francois Brunel not only believes, but shows the twins to the world.

For several years he has been working on the project I "m not a look-alike, which means "I'm not like." You will be surprised, but in his photographs there are no twins or even relatives. These are strangers. Francois travels the world and photographs those who look like friend of people. His collection already contains more than two hundred portraits. By the way, an application for participation in his project can be submitted on his personal website.

The photographer notes that, surprisingly, twins very quickly find a language with each other, and sometimes they even have something in common in their biography. So, two girls during the photo shoot found out that they met with the same guy. Brunel's works are so warm, so it's hard to imagine that these people can live in different cities or parts of the world.

But still, the idea of the I "m not a look-alike project is not to demonstrate the similarity of two different people, as you might think, but to show that, despite all the similarities, they are completely different people, everyone has their own character and their own lives. And of course, this is a great opportunity to let the project participants look at themselves in a new way, from the outside. After all, the thought that your double is walking somewhere makes you look at yourself and your life from a completely different angle .

Outwardly similar people are not uncommon, everyone has come across someone who looks like themselves, sometimes more than once. But twins are a rarer phenomenon. But, as it turned out, finding your copy is not so difficult. In any case, the French photographer Francois Brunel proves this in practice, making joint photographs of doubles for several years.

Actually, Brunel himself is like two drops of water similar to the famous comedian Rowan Atkinson, the same Mr. Bean. Familiar and unfamiliar people overcame Brunel with this "news" year after year.

At first, he laughed it off, but once he thought, and decided to make an unusual photo project out of this.

Since then, François Brunel has been traveling and looking into people's faces, as well as accepting applications for participation in the project through his website. As a result, today there are almost one and a half hundred twins in his collection. Moreover, these are not outwardly exact copies of famous people, but simple, but very similar people who can be photographed together, even if they have not met before.

By the way, as Brunel noted, unfamiliar doubles usually instantly find mutual language, common interests and even, sometimes, commonalities in the biography (for example, two girls found out that they met the same man at different times).

François Brunel called his project I'm not look like, "I'm not like", and this makes a lot of sense. The fact is that in fact, twins can only be confused one by one. They are really very similar, but if you take a picture of them together, you can see how many differences there are between them. This is what became the idea of the whole project - to show that the twins are not clones of each other at all, but different people with their own characters, habits and destinies.

However, there are, to some extent, exceptions: for example, among Brunel's photographs there is a photograph of Edith Prefontaine and Stephanie Trembley. They are not sisters, and did not even know each other, but still they are similar to each other, like twins. Moreover, both girls, without saying a word, came to Brunel's workshop almost identically dressed and wearing glasses of the same uniform!

And yet the main value of the project is not to show the similarities and differences of people. And in that people themselves look at themselves in a new way: after all, the realization that your “copy” is walking somewhere makes you look at yourself from the outside. And this is, perhaps, more important than any perception of art.

Tegan Lucas, a PhD student at the University of Adelaide School of Medicine, conducted a study based on a database of face and body measurements from over 4,000 people combined with mathematical calculations. It was she who deduced this almost unbelievable figure: one chance in a trillion.

But if there is even a small chance, it will fall out to someone, right? Faktrum found a whole collection of such matches! For example…

1. A girl met her doppelgänger in college in Germany

Student Ciara Murphy from Ireland moved to Germany to study, but the last thing she expected was to meet her doppelgänger there. The girl suspected something was wrong when they began to constantly ask her if she had a sister who had come with her together.

The same question was asked of the unsuspecting Cordelia Roberts from the UK, who also moved to Germany to study. In the end, the girls accidentally collided and realized that others mistook them for twins. Ciara and Cordelia are now friends and are still referred to as "twins" in college.

2. The girl who decided to find a double on the Internet

Irish host 26-year-old Neve Guini launched a 28-day project called Stranger Twins to find the person who is most like herself. Neve was amazed to find her doppelgänger living just an hour away from her!

Neve found Karen Branigan in April 2015 when her campaign in in social networks gained popularity. The couple met and took pictures.

Moreover, after some time, Neve found another girl from Italy, even closer to her in appearance. Neve flew to Genoa to meet her doppelgänger, blue-eyed brunette Louise.

3. A girl accidentally found her doppelgänger via Instagram

Amanda Fisher and Meredith Pond are not twins, but the resemblance between them is striking!

Fisher's friend pointed her to an Instagram photo of another girl who looked exactly like Amanda. Our heroine failed to contact the double, and then she published both photos - herself and the double - on Imgur, asking users to help in the search.

Many simply did not believe that the photographs were two different people, until one user accidentally recognized his friend, 22-year-old Meredith Pond from Indiana, in a double. He suggested Amanda Meredith's Facebook page, after which the girls were finally able to get to know each other and exchange photos.

4. A man met his doppelgänger on a plane

The bearded man met his doppelgänger when he accidentally sat in his seat. Neil Douglas was shocked to meet Robert Stirling on a flight from London to Galway. Instead of asking him to move over, the 32-year-old photographer took a selfie and shared the photo on social media.

The stranger turned out to be incredibly similar: the same thick red beard and mustache, smile and hairstyle. Both men were in black shirts, and later, after learning that they had checked into the same Irish hotel, the twins decided to celebrate their acquaintance with a mug of beer at a nearby bar.

5. Photographer has been photographing double strangers for 12 years.

Canadian Francois Brunel became so interested in the phenomenon of twins that for 12 years he deliberately searched for people with almost identical features. He created the photo project "I'm not like" - a photo exhibition of unrelated "twins" whom he met around the world.

Brunel himself is compared with the famous comedian Rowan Atkinson, who played Mr. Bean.

6. Doppelgänger Site

These girls live thousands of miles apart. Jennifer, 33, from Texas, and Ambra, 23, from North Carolina, met five minutes after signing up for Twin Strangers, a site that helps people find their doppelgänger from all over the world.

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