What I love most about photography is its ability to track time. The shutter is open for 1/250th of a second, and a person is rendered frozen in time. Leave the shutter open longer, and the subject is captured moving through time. Pick up a family photo album, flip through the pages and witness how time flies.
Photography helps explain time, or, at the very least, points out what happens while it passes. I’ve been a portrait photographer for several decades. Some of my clients bring their children to my studio every year, tapping into photography’s ability to provide concrete evidence that at age eight their daughter had a toothless grin or that at age twelve their son started to wear glasses. They hang these photos, in chronological order, on a wall in their home as a reminder that these things happened. The images offer an easy way for the parents to go back in time.
Everything changes as time moves on.
But in many ways, nothing changes at all.
My body of work about identical twins, begun in 2004, has ended up addressing both claims.
I began photographing twins because of my interest in the differences, rather than the similarities, between two people who share the same DNA. At first glance, a set of identical twins looks incredibly the same. If you pay close attention, though, you start to notice the slightly lopsided mouth of one, the narrowing of the eyes of the other... the air of self-confidence of one, the shyness of the other. As a portrait photographer, these visual surprises fascinate me.
Curious to see how the passage of time treated these and other differences, I rephotographed many of my original subjects 10 years later. In some cases, 20 years later.
Though Brian and Andrew had gone from childhood to the brink of adulthood, I found them stretched out on the same beds covered with the same plaid bedspreads in the same boyish bedroom. The table, the lamp and the cross-stitched “A” and “B” were in the same place. Nothing had really changed in 10 years. The boys, though, had lost a parent. They were more hardened, wiser and better acquainted with love and loss. Their relationship with one another had grown more complex. One twin was stockier than the other and had thicker hair. The boys had lots of bruises and scars to show for all they’d been through since I’d last photographed them. Everything had changed.
Martha and Mary sat in the same recliners. The same painting still adorned the wall 10 years later. Same lamp, same curtains. The ripple in the carpet was still there, too. Nothing had really changed. But the two women were frailer. One twin’s face was thinner than the other’s. Health issues had begun to crop up. They were beginning to lose their friends and were facing their own mortality in more realistic terms. Everything had changed.
Twenty years later, Jean and Jill still had the formal gowns they’d worn in the first portrait. Their expressions were the same. They were as close as ever. The stuffed monkey was still sitting in the chair! But they were unable to fit in the dresses, their hair had turned grey and the house plant in the corner had grown taller. The women’s children had left home. They had both become grandmothers. One twin’s face was more drawn than the other’s.
This is a work in progress. I plan to continue to follow these and some of the other sets of twins I’ve photographed.
Tracking time with my camera.
Picture above:
Brian and Andrew
Pictured below:
Atticus and Alexander, 20 years later
Carrie and Angie, 10 years later
Derrick and Dustin,10 years later
Eva and Elise, 10 years later
Jan and Sheri, 20 years later
Jean and Jill, 20 years later
Marliss and Marlo, 10 years later
Martha and Mary, 10 years later
Naomi and Nairobi, 10 years
Portia and Ada, 10 years later
Rebecca and Elizabeth, 20 years later
