The picture above has collected thousands of comments, most of which come from people who try to find out how many girls there actually are in the photo. Can you distinguish the people from their reflections?
IMAGE: @TIZZIA ON INSTAGRAM
So how many girls are actually in the photo? Well, despite the many different arguments and theories, many people seemed to be thinking along these lines.
IMAGE: @TIZZIA ON INSTAGRAM
Actually, as Vergari herself admitted, the picture really does show two sisters, both of whom are looking into mirrors (the nearest girl is looking into a mirror that's just out of shot of the camera, which adds to the confusion).
IMAGE: @TIZZIA ON INSTAGRAM
The missing mirror edges sustain the illusion
The answer, as Vergari herself explained, is two sisters. The puzzle works because a photograph can contain several images of the same person, including reflections, while presenting them all on one flat surface. Counting every visible face as a separate person assumes the very thing the mirrors disrupt.
A reflection can preserve enough detail to look like another figure standing in the scene. When mirror boundaries are outside the frame or hard to identify, the viewer has fewer clues for separating the physical arrangement from its repeated images.
Follow a repeated feature through the picture
Choose a detail such as clothing or a head position and see where it appears again. Repetition alone does not prove an explanation, but it can help you test whether several visible figures might be images of the same person. Then look for changes in orientation and for edges that suggest a reflective surface.
A wider photograph would make the puzzle easier by showing where the mirrors begin and end. Vergari’s framing withholds some of those boundaries, allowing the repeated figures to compete with the physical scene. That is why counting faces alone leads the viewer astray: each recognizable face may be another image of someone already present. The composition asks the eye to solve an arrangement while denying it some of the usual spatial clues.
This post links to Vergari's Instagram image. Keeping that attribution matters: the appeal is a photographer's carefully framed scene, not an anonymous puzzle generated by the caption. Enjoy the answer, then return to the composition to see why the first impression was so persuasive.
For more examples of apparently impossible photographic arrangements, explore Surreal Photographs and Optical Illusions: A Closer Look.
Why the photograph still works once solved
The answer does not make the photograph stop working. Once the two sisters are distinguished from their reflections, the viewer can follow how a single pose recurs across the frame. Similarity initially produces confusion; later it becomes the clue that organizes the scene. That reversal is part of the pleasure of a carefully composed mirror photograph, beyond the simple reveal of a number.
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