Caroline Minjolle: Monozygotes

«Monoszygotes is a photographic essay consisting of almost 60 years of images of my twin sister and me.
We lived apart long before we became adults. When I was 15, I left my hometown in the south of France to become a ballet dancer. I lived in Paris, then Bonn, Bern and Zurich. We’ve lived physically separate lives for all these years, hundreds of miles apart, with very different family and career paths. But a strong and unique bond has always united us.
Each of our physical encounters, rarely more than 3 or 4 times a year, is the subject of a photo session that immortalizes this moment and creates a visual continuum. We have ritualised our reunions in the form of a photographic project. In the first picture of us, we are 15 days old, lying side by side in the same bassinet. When we became teenagers, we took over from our parents by borrowing their Kodak Retinette to stage ourselves. This was followed by many cameras, films, polaroid images, and all sorts of formats, in black and white and colour.
More than just a duo, Monozygotes is a family project, involving several generations, our parents, husbands, partners and children, all occasional assistants called upon to trigger the camera.
Sometimes our monozygotic gemellity, our physical similarities, are clearly the subject of the image. Other images reflect our complicity and our desire to have fun. In the latter case, the mirror effect is relegated to the background and symmetry is abolished, highlighting instead our differences and our paricularities. Our intention is not to artificially reinforce clichés about twins, but rather to bring to life our genuine attachment to each other.»

Caroline Minjolle