2015

Twinsburg, OH, USA. 6x7 medium format film & digital photography.

House of Surprises is an ongoing photographic project documenting the annual Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio. The largest gathering of twins in the world, set against the vibrant atmosphere of an American county fair.

The portraits are both intimate and staged, choreographed and observational. I direct my subjects into poses that feel held or interrupted, often landing just before or after a natural expression. These gestures become a kind of pageantry. The sitter performs, and so do I. The camera becomes part of the theater.

At the surface, the festival is pure spectacle: Americana, kitsch, novelty. But I’m drawn to what slips beneath the sameness. There is something quietly uncanny about encountering people who appear identical but carry subtle fractures in tone, posture, or gaze. Through portraiture, I explore that gap: not just between twins, but between how we present and who we are. Between what we long to reveal and what we hide. The image becomes a mirror that refracts instead of reflects.

Performance, in this context, is not deception. It is a threshold. A ritual gesture that makes something truer visible. Stagecraft can be both annihilated and foregrounded within a single frame. In these images, I’m negotiating the choreography of self - in the sitters and in my own presence behind the lens. The performance of photographing is inseparable from the image itself.

Over time, the project has become less about twins and more about twinning. Mirroring, doubling, repeating, and diverging. The desire to match, the ache of almost-symmetry. The illusion of unity, undone. A visual language of contradiction emerges which is theatrical and quiet, surreal and grounded, humorous and reverent.

The House of Surprises isn’t just a place. It’s a threshold. A space where identity is worn, mirrored, suspended, and sometimes shed. Where surface shouts, but myth whispers underneath. 

2017

2017

2015

2015

2015

2017

2017

2015

2017

2015

2015

2012

2025

2012