Category: Photography

Gingers around the world

Do you know that only 1-2% of the world’s population have natural red hair? So it can be identified as a very unique trait. Also, it can become a fascinating selling feature that can stand out in a crowd. But for in some cases, this uniqueness can lead to bullying for being different. If an uncommon hair color like this is seen as individuality rather than an oddity, we all can live in a more understanding and beautiful world, because after all, we all have the same DNA that flows in us beyond borders. Here is a testimony to that.

Also read: Why Black Opal So Much Expensive?

A photographer traveled the world capturing gingers around the world! But his sole intention was not to capture gingers around the world but there was another reason for that!

39 years old Scottish photographer Kieran Dodds has been traveling all over the world in the past seven years. He captures different people with only one connecting trait. Which is Ginger hair. But the project is not just about the hair. According to Kieran, it’s about connecting people across political and cultural boundaries, using a rare golden thread.

He said, “Look, stare and marvel, that’s the whole point. Find connections across the world. I want people to compare the portraits and delight in our variety even without an apparently homogenous group. We are made of the same stuff but we are uniquely tuned”.

Kieran Dodds told how a 7-year long journey of meeting gingers across the globe started. In 2014, Scotland voted on independence and he was considering the clichés of identity. He knew he was one of them, being pale and ginger, but very early on in the research process, he found that it is a global trait. Even Scotland, as the global capital, has 13% of people at most showing the hair color. There were two hot spots, it claimed, one in Scotland and Ireland that is confirmed by science – the Celtic Fringe. The other hot Spot was in Russia which was confirmed by an anecdote.

He made interesting discoveries during his photography project. But, he mainly traveled across places that are identified as hot spots of the ginger population, such as Scotland and the Russian city of Perm, Jamaica, with complex genetic inheritance.

Kieran Said, ” Our genes have traveled far across history even if we personally have not, Due to constraints on money (this was all self-funded), I focused my attention on the two hot spots, but also Jamaica. I made worked for over seven years in different places in the UK. In London, I met gingers from across the world, but in Scotland, I saw that you don’t need to travel far. One lad had an Indian great-grandfather and another had an Eastern European mother and Middle Eastern dad. He is Scottish, but his story expands our expectations of that narrow political term.”

Also, he said, “I traveled to the city of Perm (an apt name!) and met people who embodied the geographic location with European names and ancestry, but also Asia. Sveta Ni, in particular, stood out as she said her father’s family line was originally from China. The oldest ginger gene mutation is traced to Central Asia with gingers in Western China, Afghanistan, and North Pakistan. I would love to go there and continue the project, but the transect I have made across 11 time zones in an attempt to capture this range.

To the West, the outlier is Treasure Beach, on the southern coast of Jamaica. The locals shared a story of shipwrecked Scots swimming ashore and setting up home, but the local historian Dr. Bones said the reality is, alas, less romantic than that. He described successive waves of invaders (Spanish conquistadors, French, English, and Scottish groups) who have left their legacy. Black River, a larger settlement nearby, had a slave market to supply labor for the sugar estates. They were joined in the 18th century by Scottish political rebels who were sent to Jamaica as indentured laborers. Over the centuries, the ebbs and flows of human life can be seen in the beautiful people here. The fishing villages here are a quiet and safe bolthole for discerning tourists. It wasn’t a hardship for me to visit.”

This photographer put his work in a photography book called Gingers. And he dedicated it to his twin daughters. He said that he want something for them to grow up and see that they are part of something bigger, not merely an identity group but a unit within the bigger family of humanity.

According to him, “The series is made to help us see the individual people in this series, that we are made of the same stuff and in the case of hair, it shows. Dividing people into smaller groups based on characteristics seems counterproductive if we continue to see them as an oddity rather than as a unique part of a global human family.”

More info: Instagram | kierandodds.com | Facebook | twitter.com | “Gingers” book

#1 Clockwise: Steven Mckay, Esther, Rebecca (Mother), Chloe, Lois, and Abigail, Scotland

#2 Alexander Soued, Scotland, Born In 2011

#3 Sveta Ni, Russia, Born In 1996

#4 Jordan DeLeon, Jamaica, Born In 2016

#5 Nixie Connelly, Scotland

#6 Photographer’s Daughters Izzy & Ada Dodds, Scotland

#7 Jamie Hallam, Scotland, Born In 2004

#8 Lucy Fleming, Scotland, Born In 2005

#9 Marteka Nembhard, Jamaica, Born In 2005

#10 Photographer Kieran Dodds, Scotland, Born In 1980

#11 Maya Duncan-Smith, Dundee, Scotland

#12 Gilad Belkin, Israel, Born In 1988

#13 Pacey Young, Scotland

#14 Randy Wong, Jamaica, Born In 1988

#15 Chris McCabe, Scotland