Francois brunel travel notes. Each of us has a doppelgänger. Photo project by François Brunel. My job is to create stories through images. My camera and Photoshop are my biggest allies.

Canadian photographer François Brunel came up with an interesting project called "I'm Not Like".

He is engaged in looking for similar people and makes portraits.

For 4 years, the photographer's arsenal is 140 pairs.

At first, people who were similar to each other were suggested to him by acquaintances, then he specially traveled, peering into faces. And when the project became famous, thousands of letters came to its website. And although there he asked people who already know their doubles to respond, photos came from “lonely” people. “They asked to find a double for them. I leafed through these letters and memorized each face - in case I see the same somewhere again, ”François Brunel said.

Brunel's twins are similar only at first glance - and this is one of the goals of the photographer: not to look for absolutely identical people, but to see his personality in each of them. Therefore, he even called the project "I'm not like" ("I'm not look-alike"), and a black and white photo helps to achieve this goal: "The viewer is not distracted by the color of the eyes, skin or hair - and my heroes do not have them are always the same. He sees only the essence of man. You know, it's interesting to watch people when they look into their own eyes. Some of the characters, meeting in my studio, instantly become friends and continue to communicate,” said the photographer.

Canadians Nina Say and Anna Rubin are friends of one of Francois' daughters. Both are artists and were born on the same day. The girls even thought that they were separated twins, but their parents deny this.

“Someone was familiar before me, for example, Marcel Stepanov and Ludovic Mellard. They are executive producers on one of the Parisian TV channels and have always been mistaken for brothers. But it was funny until Marcel's girlfriend kissed him - and realized that it was Ludovic. There were other interesting cases during the project: Francois once found a double for a familiar meteorologist, and he turned out to be his amateur colleague. And two of his "twins" at different times went on a date with the same man.

When Francois first invited Edith Prefontaine and Stephanie Tremblay to his place, they looked like twins: they were dressed the same, smiled the same and even wore frames of the same shape.

Victoria Stusyak participated in Brunel's project. Her couple was found in Poland - in the person of the artist Alexandra Bartosik: “Alex and I did not know each other before the Francois workshop,” Victoria recalls. - And, looking at each other, they did not understand: how are we, in fact, similar? We have different noses and eyebrows! For example, it seemed to me that she looked like my friend, who, like Alex, has Polish roots. But for sure, I thought, all the participants in the “I'm not like” project are just as blind as I am. They don't see what others see. In general, the idea to shoot us was given by Francois, his friend, who knows both me and Alex. So the photographer, when he saw us, immediately said: "The only thing in common between you is that you are both beautiful." That's it, I thought, for sure Francois will not use us. But he put on the light, we felt something in each other - and the characters began to play. I liked the idea itself - it makes you think: you are not alone in tacos, this reduces selfishness.

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 .

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 instance…

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 most resembles herself. Neve was amazed to find her doppelgänger living just an hour away from her!

Neve found Karen Branigan in April 2015 when her social media campaign was gaining momentum. 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.

© Stkittsthegreat.com

Many simply did not believe that the photographs were two different people, until one user accidentally recognized his acquaintance, 22-year-old Meredith Pond from Indiana, in a double. He prompted Amanda to 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.

What language is understood by all Slavs?

What mistake almost everyone makes when using a table knife?

Why did women start wearing bras?

Your ton of gold floats in the oceans

Who are the "Children of the Moon"?

What is the rarest combination of eye and hair color in the world?

March 19, 2013 | Creative Sister | 13.647

Canadian photographer Francois Brunelle has been looking for "" for several years now. This photo project is called "I'm not like" ("I'm not look-alike").

It already features 140 pairs of "twins" who are not even members of the same family. Brunel's counterparts are not, in fact, absolute copies of each other. After all, the project is called "I'm not like."

Black-and-white photographs amazingly emphasize both the incredible similarity of people and the individuality of their personality. The photographer believes that it is the technique of black and white photography that allows you to most accurately focus on the essence of a person, and not be distracted by analyzing the accuracy of matching shades of hair, eye skin, etc. Francois Brunel says that it is very interesting to observe the reaction of a person who first met his double. However, external similarity most often attracts people to each other - many of his "models" became friends, barely looking at each other, and continue to maintain constant communication.

See more issues on the topic -,,.

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 twins usually instantly find a common language, common interests and even, sometimes, commonality in their biography (for example, two girls found out that they had met the same man at different times).

Francois Brunel called his project I’m not look alike, “I don’t look 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 the photographs of Brunel 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.