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DOPPLEGANGERS?

If you are a student and/or a lover of history, you understand the importance of pictures. If you are also an artist like me, you have a knack and a passion for them. You can imagine my excitement, when I came to the conclusion that I had discovered the world's sweetest honeyhole of authentic historic images. I have been gathering them for about four years... 75% from one dealer on the Internet; a person who listed the old tintypes as "Man with Mustache" or "Woman With Nice Dress." He had no clue what he was selling. And yes, I even tried to tell him. So far I have watched him sell several thousand of these antique images. I snagged what I could!

The tintype above may have been the very first of this steady stream of images that I identified and then "saved" on this one Internet "auction block." This was a famous Victorian taxidermist from Colorado.

Finding such a fantastic image as this, of Martha Maxwell advertised as just a "woman with a shotgun," made me begin to extrapolate the possibilities. One has to ask, how or where does anybody find, collect or come to own THREE THOUSAND images? That had to be a story by itself... And I have my theories, but the owner made light of the mountain of history he was selling cheap. I based my conclusions about the images, mostly "Ferrotypes," on mere human "facial ID." It is more reliable than you might think.

How many times in your life have you sat down next to your mother, or some other close loved one, and it was not actually her, but a look-alike? Not that often. Humans can identify persons by just seeing the back of their heads. What confuses them, and only temporarily, are simple similarities... hair color, a hat or clothing, body type, head shape, facial hair... But it only takes an instant to acknowledge our mistake, whenever we make a misidentification. I might add that this has rarely ever happened to me. After I had collected over five hundred of these wonderful treasures, I developed a technique using Photoshop which helps to prove the people in my images are who I think they are. I call it "Quintangulation." Of course once I did, I had to admit that I had purchased a number of mere "doppelgangers."

I can take a known image of a person, a "base image," and pinpoint a minimum of five, but preferably around seven to ten key points on their face (eyes, nostrils, upper lip, chin), and through this "Q-5" preserve their mathematical relationships to one another, overlay that unique map on one of my look-alikes. Starting with alignment of the eyes, which do not change very much during a mature person's life, the other points must come to rest pretty near the same features on the base image, to pass muster. It is rare to find two portraits taken from exactly the same angle, so there will rarely be an 100% exact fit. But given considerations of age, weight gain, and the camera's point of view, I expect about a 90% fit to call it a match. And I get that often. This is my most recent discovery. One must also match up the angle by which they sit on the head, the way they protrude or lay close to the skull, their shape, whether classic teardrop shape (upside down) or round or pointed... all must me considered.

ABOVE- two acknowledged images of the most recognizable outlaw in American history... and not surprisingly, according to "quintangulation," they line up almost 100%. Today there is a great search on for old pictures which might earn the finder a Million. At any given time there are several vendors on Internet auctions wishfully offering "newly discovered" images of Billy the Kid. It is sad and somewhat suspicious that the only face history lovers seem to recognize is that of a serial killer whose bloody name became synomynous with New Mexico history- And bizarre that a picture of him would ever be thought to be worth so much. Well, I'm going to pop some of those bubbles here.

These were some of the better "wanna-be-Billys," which I have studied over the past months and years. Any quadrangulation which renders more than two serious anomalies is immediately given a failing grade. But actually, anything less than 90% is a failure. Close does not count. Very close does not count. But the Quintangulation is painfully objective and leaves no doubt to any one with eyes- and objectivity. The likenesses on the left were close... and some on the right were very close, but the only ones which are really in the running are along the bottom. The reason? Very few of the ears in these very convincing portraits are large or prominant enough. These various likenesses proposed to be the "Kid" do prove one thing however, and that is that people can instantly recognize a facial similarity... probably as accurately as so-called facial recognition technology- or almost. Unfortunately, the 90% similarity overwhelms that critical 10% difference, and people get all excited, as if they are about to get a Million dollars... But it is that last 5- 10 % of details that separate the true historic find from a delusional saga of wishful thinking.

These three faces of "Sam Bass" prove that historians have been loose if not reckless with the facts for a century. Several of my sources declare that there is not even one authenticated image of Sam Bass in existence. Since none of these even look like one of the others, and a simple line-up shows their important differences, there can only be one "known" face of Sam Bass, at the most.

A new Sam Bass photo has surfaced more recently, proposed to include the whole Sam Bass gang, and it may be true... but without Sam, as the figure identified (upper left) as Sam only adds a fourth, and I might add a blurry, moose-faced visage to the mix. And all accounts of Sam were that he was a good-looking lad of average height... My own bias is to trust the first image introduced as possibly Sam Bass, one submitted by George Hendricks in his classic book on outlaws... Badman of the West, published in 1942.

I hope to help clear up some old, popular delusions here about historic photos traditionally believed to be famous gunfighters and outlaws. So many false faces have been accepted and repeatedly published that the faces, long embraced as icons of our Western history, authentic or not, have become part of the fabric or the Western Myth. But we can do better now... and we should. Else the Internet will become so unreliable as to be too flooded with spurious information to be taken seriously. We may be there now.

There is plenty of stuff still coming to the surface, as my finds prove. But we will never recognize them unless we know what we are looking for. So I hope to help clear up some of the confusion, and there is a lot of it, about which likenesses we can or should trust and rely upon. This will hurt some... sometimes even me, and help others, but it is our duty to history and future generations. IF my collection was ever accepted by a major museum or whatever, as historically significant, and would house it, I would donate a great part of it... but that is down the road. The point is that I am in this as a result of my love and respect for our wonderful history, and not to "get rich." That- and the great fun I am having- which this blog is trying to share with you and future generations.

MORE about doppelgangers here at my blog about them... https://doppelcatcher.blogspot.com/

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About the Blogger...

I grew up in Texas, in a home where the Old West shaped our culture and our perspective on the world. For many school days I spent my after...