NeatNit

I like that this might as well be intentional. "[If you] don't buy a year book, [you will] forget high school." And the definitely intentional "Don't forget high school! Buy a year book!"

Thanks. I couldn't believe perspective alone could cause its head to look that narrow and elongated. Seems like it's quite narrow and elongated from the get go.

what the hell is the left picture

I see no reason whatsoever to suspect this

It's going at an angle, not up. It's 90° from the handrail itself, which is sloped to match the incline of the stairs.

Yeah. I've now found a reason that makes me convinced the mattress is at the bottom. I made a top level comment about it.

The biggest factor IMO is something no one mentioned yet: we can only see one face of each step (either the top or the wall). If a photo is taken from the bottom, we would almost always be able to see the tops of the first few steps, which isn't visible here. If a photo is taken from the top, the walls would pretty much never be visible (if they were, you could also see the photographer's feet).

Therefore, this photo is only consistent with a photo taken from the top.

It is possible that this is an extremely long flight of stairs or that the photo was taken from a deliberately deceptive angle, but if that's the case I have to say it was expertly done, because I am CERTAIN that we are looking from the top and the mattress is at the bottom.

Not convinced. It's a different set of stairs and a different carpet. I have had stairs with a carpet more similar to the OP that did not have a riser. See elsewhere in these comments for a photo of these stairs, now bare. In the distant past, they were carpeted.

Interesting. My parents' apartment had carpeted stairs when they bought it (when I was around 3). About a decade later they completely renovated the kitchen and naturally the renovations creeped into other parts of the home. One of the builders showed them that underneath the carpet were beautiful stone steps. They instantly decided to take out the carpet, and the stairs are bare to this day. Here's a photo I took just now (obviously from the bottom looking up):

The handrail argument doesn't make any sense. It would be at the same height regardless of direction.

Back when I thought it was two mattresses, I thought it couldn't be at the top because the right mattress probably wouldn't be held up like that. But since it's one mattress, it can relatively easily be held at that angle with most of its weight resting on the step.

And that's my main reason: it really seems like the mattress is being pushed towards that step, and I believe it's being pushed by gravity. Doesn't make as much sense for it to be pushed in that direction by someone.

I'm not married to it though, it's a really tricky picture.

That's already banned in quite a lot of countries.