"Symmetrical portraits": Two people in one

EVERY DAY PHOTOGRAPHERS AROUND THE WORLDlooking for new ways to tell stories or to capture what we previously did not notice. We choose interesting photo projects and ask their authors what they wanted to say. This week is the Symmetrical Portraits series of photographer Julian Walkkinstein, living between London and Sydney. With this project he tried to prove that perfect symmetry is not necessarily synonymous with beauty. In parallel with the Symmetrical Portraits, Walkkenstein launched an online service and the eponymous application Echoism.org, with which you can create your own completely symmetrical portrait.

There is a myth that people with the most symmetrical faces are more attractive than others. But if you make yourself perfectly symmetrical, will you consider yourself more beautiful than before? Or show yourself disgusting? Do you even recognize yourself? Do you think any side of your face is better than the other? I have no goal to get a definite answer, I just want to show that the perception of appearance is always subjective. Moreover, we are under the influence of society from early childhood, and the concept of beauty is changing all the time. It was also important for me to show how easy it is to “remake” a face and make a person see himself in a different light. I selected the participants for the project in London, all of them are ordinary people from the street, and not from the catalogs of modeling agencies. It was important for me to be people under 30, that is, already formed personalities. And, of course, I took into account the peculiarities of the structure of their faces. All of them were photographed, sitting in front of the camera in identical poses. I specifically highlighted the faces of the models on one side only, so that the differences between the right and left halves of the face were clearly visible.