identity

Earlier this month, we shared how a Sikh man named Veerender Jubbal was misidentified as a Paris attack terrorist after someone maliciously Photoshopped a selfie he took. A similar thing just happened to a Moroccan woman.

Nabila Bakkatha was misidentified by major media outlets as Hasna Ait Boulahcen, the terrorist suspect who died in a suicide vest explosion a week ago during a police raid in France. It turns out a former friend sold Bakkatha's photo to a journalist.

Photographer Meagan Abell from Richmond, Virginia, was browsing a thrift shop a few weeks ago when she stumbled across 4 sets of medium format negatives, sitting in plastic sleeves among other vintage photos. After purchasing and scanning them, she was amazed at the beautiful photos that emerged.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration and one of its agents, Timothy Sinnigen, are being sued by a woman who claims they used the photos on a seized phone of hers to hijack her identity and create a fake Facebook profile though which they hoped to bust an alleged New York drug ring.

You know, it used to be even photography thieves had to put some work in if they wanted to get a bit of dishonest business, but a new project by the name of Pro-folio shows that just a little bit of code can make stealing photos and creating a whole fake portfolio a one-click affair.

Over the last few days, many Instagram and Facebook users received a nasty shock when they were unceremoniously locked out of their accounts. The lock-out was accompanied by a message asking for government-issued proof of ID before being let back in.

If these were famous people or celebrities, that would be understandable. But all manner of users have been locked out of their accounts over the last week pending identification; some are even being asked to provide birth certificates if their IDs are deemed unacceptable.

Double Identity is a neat project by photographer Caroline Briggs in which she photographs portraits of identical twins wearing the same clothing and striking the same poses, and then overlays one on top of the other to show their similarities and differences. She writes:

My series aims to avoid direct physical comparisons between twins while allowing the viewer to acknowledge and accept the twins’ similarities and differences. For the twin, it gives them a different perspective on their double identities and poses questions about their relationship and their desire - or lack of desire - to live completely separate lives.

Briggs has the credentials to do this project -- she's a twin herself!

Singapore-based photographer Aw Zinkie's photo series "Republic of Pulau Semakau" explores the idea of a trash bin being an essential part of an individual's personal space, and a way of examining their identity. Her portraits show the subjects in their personal environments with their faced replaced by held up trash bins. The series also highlights issues of waste management in Singapore, and the fact that every individual's trash causes them to become a "founder" of the offshore Semakau Landfill.

Facial recognition features are appearing in everything from cameras to photo-sharing sites, but have you thought about the different …