Nowadays, horoscope goes popular. People would like to judge a person through his or her signs. I don't prefer such ways to understand each other with strong preconceptions. That makes me thinking of some words in western philosophical history. St. Augustine once profoundly attacked horoscope with the twin brother issue in his "Confessions", which was not an original argument by St. Augustine, but derived from the Greek skepticism philosopher Carneades, one of the leaders in Plato’s garden. He said, "People born at the same time, differ in the temperament and fate", "people sharing the same encounters, may not necessarily born in the same moment".
For the interpretation of fate, I borrow Confucius’ saying as "fifty to know the fate". There are different explanations about the fate, but the age of fifties is often called the years to know it. So, I decided to photograph identical twins over the age of fifty. He/she used to have the same face, living in the same family, but their lives changed due to various reasons after growing up. I take these identical twins in their fifties face-to-face. This is a way similar to the way one looking into the mirror, "Taking people as mirror, one can know its gain and loss by revealing oneself".
Gao Rongguo was born in 1984 in Binzhou, in China's Shandong province. He graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2012, majoring in photography. Gao is an artist based in Beijing. His works have been exhibited internationally, such as at the National Portrait Gallery, Quai Branly Museum, CAFA Art Museum, Chongqing Art Museum, Today Art Museum, Dong Gang Museum of Photography, Sotheby's gallery, Changjiang Museum of contemporary Art, and Beijing Mingsheng Art Museum. His works have been featured in TIME, The Huffington Post, DailyMail, VANITY FAIR, La Republica, Esquire, Feature Shoot and Rheinische Post Online.
