How a Canadian photographer's project inspired a scientific study of doppelgangers

Canadian artist photographs doppelgangers Quebecois artist François Brunelle's series 'I'm not a look-alike!' features strangers who found their doppelgangers.

After finding his own look-alike, Quebec photographer Francois Brunelle became inspired to unite strangers with their own doppelgangers.

Brunelle’s photo series “I’m not a look-alike!” features 32 pairs of people who bear an eerily similar resemblance to one another, even though none of them shared any familial relation. The photographer said he was inspired to take on the series after people told him he resembled English actor Rowan Atkinson’s character Mr. Bean.

After photographing a few people who looked similar to each other, he reached out through social media to find more subjects and quickly became overwhelmed with the response.

“People started to write to me from all over the world and in the end I received thousands of emails with photos, stories and questions,” he told CTV’s Your Morning on Monday.

In some instances, appearance wasn’t the only thing his photo subjects had in common. Brunelle said he photographed two women who not only looked alike but got a tattoo in the same shop, share the same birthday and live in the same apartment building.

“It's an incredible story,” he said.

Geneticists from the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute in Spain became inspired by Brunelle’s photo series to understand the genetics of two people who look identical but aren’t blood related.

The study, published in the journal Cell Reports, followed the 32 pairs photographed by Brunelle and through facial recognition found that 16 of the pairs are so similar they would be considered identical.

“The DNA of these independent people from different families happens to come up as being very similar, and that's part of why they look the same,” science and technology specialist Dan Riskin told CTV’s Your Morning on Monday.

Riskin explained that twins share similar epigenetic profiles and microbiomes in their DNA. But this study found although identical-looking strangers might have similarities in their DNA, they don’t share the exact same patterns.

“With these doppelgangers you don't get those patterns; they're not similar for epigenetic stuff, they're not similar for their microbiome, it’s just the DNA that's similar and so that really gave a whole new way of understanding what make twins look the same and what makes these non-twins look the same,” Riskin said.

Geneticists are hopeful this study will bring new information to further understand genetic diseases and how they can arise, Riskin said.

“I think ultimately what this really does is tie the knot between the arts and the sciences to really drive home the creativity that goes into science and how art can inspire good science.”