R O B I N  E L I S E  M A A Y A

There’s a peculiar poetry in sameness.

In mathematics, X = X is a self-evident truth — an identity so complete it needs no justification. But when that equation is made flesh — when it splits, grows, mirrors, and refuses to settle — it becomes something far more tender and captivating.

 

For the past eight years, I’ve photographed Dani and Beni — mirror identical twins, born monochorionic diamniotic, or modi, sharing a placenta, but not an amniotic sac. Like two halves of a private palindrome, they reflect each other with uncanny precision and gentle reversal: left becomes right, gestures echo back. A smile twitches on one mouth and the other answers in a soft, slightly delayed reflection as if through glass.

 

We share a birthday, the three of us — November 16th — although I am separated by years, not minutes. Still, there’s a tether in that: an orbit of observation that turns every half-year into ritual. I return with my camera, and they return with their faces, new and yet not new. Their sameness is never stagnant. It breathes, shifts, contradicts. Like watching a mirrored self try to become its own person.

 

This project I’ve playfully been calling “X ≠ X”, is not only a study in symmetry — it’s an inquiry into the fragile boundaries of selfhood. How do we define identity when it begins as a shared cell? What does it mean to grow up as someone’s reflection, yet separately unique? 

 

Dani and Beni remind me that identity isn’t fixed like a math equation, even if it sometimes appears to be. X = X, yes — but only for a moment. Then one X turns her head, the other laughs a beat too late, and the mirror ripples.