finding dad. again

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on my last day in london last year, i visited the wellcome collection, on the euston road. i'd never before heard about the collection, a poster in a tube station drew my attention. 
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since fashioned skulls seem all the rage at the time {december 2012}, and since death is an occupational hazard on my mind, a visit seemed appropriate.

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in the last of five elaborately laid out exhibition rooms my eye stills on anonymous amateur photographs. as i slowly walk from one vintage black & white {& sepia} photograph to the next, i discover a group photo, with skull. as i peer closer into the eyes of the men assembled in the group photo, i notice the face in the left hand corner. that man’s face… he?
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my cerebral storage cabinet flings open. what is this? Is this... ? never! i stroll on, ignoring my surprise, to step straight into reverse. i peer into the demure face on the left again, drinking in its magnetizing features. at that exact moment, i chuckle. i think.  

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please find on the right here an image of my father, age twenty something, perhaps not even twenty. now let your gaze pull back to that man’s face in the left hand corner, to move back to my dad's. at the time lacking my dad's photo, i peer into cardboard eyes of a very familiar kind indeed. checking facts later, i admit a little wishful thinking held me enthralled, as did romance and unwavering dedication to dad... hello-though!

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which makes me wonder. do exact duplicates of ourselves walk this earth a few times at any given time anyway? do you perhaps {like me, vigilantly} frown upon the possibility that one day in the near or distant future, we will be able to draw queries on people's features, thus enabling encounters with look-alikes? what would that be like? would insides match outsides? 


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just a thought, he . ..☻

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{image 2 & 3 from exhibition's catalogue, 
DEATH, A PICTURE ALBUM,
the wellcome trust, 2012}