Replika

In the summer of 2009, in the process of researching the history of the development of national identity in Czechoslovakia, I discovered a collection of photographs by the Czech photographer Josef Koudelka in a book called Invasion 68: Prague. The book featured images from the August 1968 armed invasion of Czechoslovakia by five Warsaw Pact powers (Soviet Union, Bulgaria, East Germany, Romania, and Poland), precipitated by reforms that included the allowance of personal freedoms by the newly instated Alexander Dubek. Dubeks movement was known as the Prague Spring, and the invasion silenced this movement and returned Prague to Soviet control. In examining these photographs, I discovered a large photograph of a crowd, in which one of the central figures is a woman who is an exact double of myself. Despite this photograph being taken almost twenty years before I was even born, this woman could be my twin. The following work is an exploration into my personal experience of the encounter of a physical replica of myself, and the story she may have had.