William Viney’s forthcoming book Twinkind: The Singular Significance of Twins (Publication Date: January 9, 2024), is an illustrated history on the cultural significance of twins.
Drawing on hundreds of striking and sometimes haunting illustrations, William Viney examines depictions of twins as protagonists in creation stories ranging from Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca in Aztec mythology to Artemis and Apollo in Greek legend. He describes how twins have featured prominently in scientific research across the centuries, but especially in the work of Francis Galton, whose study of twins on the behavioral question of heredity versus environment gave rise to the pseudoscience of eugenics in the late nineteenth century. Viney explores the representation of twins in art, photography, and film—from the works of Roger Ballen to the cinema of Stanley Kubrick—and delves into the darker meanings ascribed to twins across the millennia.
About the Author: William Viney is a research associate at Imperial College London. He is the author of Twins: Superstitions and Marvels, Fantasies and Experiments and Waste: A Philosophy of Things. Himself a twin, he directed the documentary short film Twins on Twins.
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