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Redheaded Oregonians, your services are needed.
A Scottish photographer named Kieran Dodds is coming to town Nov. 29 to take portraits for his project Gingers of America. Dodds has been making “ginger portraits” for more than a decade around the world, resulting in a small-edition art book Gingers in 2020 and coverage on the BBC.
In 2024, he has focused his lens on the U.S., arriving in Portland just after Thanksgiving. Willing photo subjects can register via his site (click “Get Involved”) for consideration. Even those who are not selected for a portrait will be added to Dodds’ anonymous “Gingers of America” map, which shows U.S. redheaded people’s distribution.
Dodds, who identifies as a ginger, began making portraits in Scotland in 2013 and expanded to Europe, Russia and even Jamaica. He loves seeing how the gene pops up across cultures, not just Scotch-Irish, and reclaiming the term “ginger,” which is sometimes derogatory.
“The term ‘ginger’ was thrown at me as an insult growing up (and even today it’s widely used in that sense), but it’s not really red, is it?” Dodds says. “I love the descriptive power the term ‘ginger’ holds. It represents a range of color from deep golden brown to strawberry blond. My work aims to reveal the beauty of the people, written in their genes and drawn from a diverse human story.”
So far, he has photographed redheaded people from 30 U.S. states, starting in January 2024 with Native American populations in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Working in the States appeals to him as a photographer because it is so “vast, complex and diverse,” he says. He seeks out people with interesting stories as photo subjects and spends time doing interviews during the shoots.
“It is refreshing to focus on commonalities rather than division,” he says.