Exotic yet ordinary

Every now and then when I'm whoring out my photography, someone (a friend, a co-worker, my own mother) will point to one of my portraits and ask, who's that? When I tell them it's me, they usually scrunch up their face and lean in closer and look from me to the picture and back again before concluding, aloud, that, no, it doesn't look like me. Not really. And this always surprises me, because the girl in the picture? is so obviously me. But then last week, as I'm scrolling through the pictures I've uploaded, I come across these two portraits.






And I pause and scrunch up my face and catch myself thinking, who's that girl? and I call people into the room for a second opinion, to see if they recognize her, because it just doesn't look like me. Not really.