Lest someone mistake this for a portrait of genuine twins, there is a pencil notation on the back of the mount: “Both Frank Fowler.”

A similar prop is used in a double exposure shown in Walter E. Woodbury’s Photographic Amusements (1896), the most widely-circulated book on the techniques of trick photography. But in Woodbury’s rather gruesome example, a man is seen carting his own enlarged and severed head in the wheelbarrow. This more jovial version of the effect was also done with a different technique, for Woodbury’s photograph relied on a completely black background to hide the dividing line between the exposures.