Confusing photo

Assuming this wasn't photoshopped, I'm still trying to figure out what's going on here. Is this a photo of three people? (Via Reddit)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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http://twitter.com/mak_art M.A.K.

I think the face belongs to the white t shirt on the right, it’s just bent at an unusual angle to accommodate the awkward hug. Either that or someone has terrible posture
Ashley Yakeley

Apparently those “Escher girl” comics were accurate all along.
http://twitter.com/shay_guy Shay Guy

Pretty sure the face is the person on the left, who’s hunched over because she’s taller than the person she’s hugging. Moving your face in front of your armpit/shoulder isn’t that hard; try it.
- beemoh
  
  I’m thinking the face is the one on the right- there’s some blonde/pink hair surrounding it that looks more like it’s the property of the body in the pink and blue top rather than that in the white t-shirt.
- Ivo Kasiuk
  
  Although most people here seem to disagree, I think you are probably right, Shay Guy.
  - Diogenes
    
    If that’s the head of Pink Dress, she has a few dozen surplus cervical vertebrae.
http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

Could just be one person in desperate need of a chiropractor…
http://www.bauartcreative.com/ Bauart

Zaphod Beeblebrox’s sister?
- psychoperator
  
  possible. Her other head was consumed by Hexadress who was then sedated by a clever tool belt sedator before she could nom on the trapezius muscle. Lingering smile is either benign pity for Hexadress or a quiet conversation with the nearby beer. Obvious human behind them is oblivious.
http://twitter.com/zacharyjohnson Zachary John⚡on

It is the head of the person in the white shirt on the right. The way her hair is messed up and kind of bumped out onto the other person’s shoulder creates a bit of an optical illusion that makes it seem like it was rotated from the other direction. Once my eyes finally saw past that I cannot unsee that the head belongs to the white shirt. Imagine that she is leaning forward more than what you can tell from the photo… or cover the hair with your hand.
nixiebunny

The lady on the right got hugged so hard that her head fell off.
Ethan Taliesin Houser

I’m gonna say photoshop–but then again, I didn’t look at it very long.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

Face belongs to the person on the right. Her head appears overly large and distorted because cheap phone cameras sometimes create weird perspective effects.
http://twitter.com/Epers Eddie Perkins

I believe the visible face belongs to the white shirt person. I’m thinking what’s really throwing people off is the illusion of the white shirt person’s body being smaller than it is, not so much the heads. Or, you know, it’s photoshopped.
Theo Van Der Hamm

check out the forearm on the left arm of the white shirted figure. it is as large if not larger then the base of the arm… not right. unless that is popeye
- Nutrition Industry
  
  FTW. Big arms from the white shirt one from its small body and missing a big or small head somewhere in the frame. Note noodle arms from purple/blue dress one behind white shirt one as well. TVDH tagged it, total Shoop. Not sure how they did it though.
  - copperwatt
    
    Hmm.. I think not. They are hugging, she has a soft forearm, it is squished against the other woman’s side, causing it to appear larger than it is.
Earth Man

http://imgur.com/JzvvZ

With the help of some shitty masking, I think you can tell the redhead is the person on the left. The brunette just seems to have a rather flexible neck. Maybe.
oasisob1

This is a photo of five people; the two hugging in the foreground, three more in the background. It’s quite exciting!
- http://boingboing.net/ The Life Of Bryan
  
  Three (or more) cheers for polyamory!
BarBarSeven

Hmmm… Is this viral marketing for some Michel Gondry project?
Rider

Fixed focus fisheye strikes again.

This is where a ton of those giant animal pictures come from also.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/25/giant-rat-at-brooklyns-ma_n_937316.html

Same effect, notice how strange the tines of the pitchfork look as they are coming towards the camera.
Cunning

There’s a famous photo of two women embracing on airport tarmac – I think one of them was Eleanor Roosevelt…or perhaps Lady Bird Johnson…anyways, the effect is very similar. In that case there were only two women. Damned if I can find the photo though.
voiceinthedistance

I count a goat, three chickens and a pony, but some of the settings on my monitor may be a little off.
pjcamp

If it’s three people, two of them are dudes.
Kerouac

Not a photo of three people… Just parts of three people.
Robert Cook

The face we see, as others have correctly pointed out, is the woman in the white t-shirt. The taller woman’s head is mostly hidden behind the brunette’s head, but fringes of her lighter hair can be seen. There is a third person in the background, possibly in a mirror, and he may be the person taking the photograph.
http://weirdly.net Jacob Ewing

I think what’s happening here is the lady in the white t-shirt is in an awkward position, and that is indeed her head. If you look at her pelvis it seems to me that it is almost perpendicular to the lady in the dress. So I imagine her right hip is pointing roughly toward the other’s pelvis, and her shoulders are hunched toward the other. Maybe she’s sitting on a bar stool and is having to lean off of it at an angle.
woodly

“She had *man* hands.”
Matthew Siegler

I, for one, welcome our new triply cojoined overlords.
http://egypt.urnash.com Egypt Urnash

I’m thinking parasitic twin.