Gingers

Rare and beautiful, ginger hair has inspired artists for centuries, lifting our gaze beyond the dull and the drab. In a series of stunning portraits of gingers from around the world, British photographer Kieran Dodds celebrates the flow of DNA across cultures and generations. The people of GINGERS are a vibrant reminder that we are all made of the same substance, and sometimes it shows.

GINGERS OF AMERICA

Kieran has been making ginger portraits for over a decade now across the world, but there is one country that is still crying out to be documented: the U.S.A. Indeed, when his work appeared on the BBC with the launch of his small-edition art book GINGERS, he was bombarded with offers from ginger sitters across the States. In 2024, he will be traveling around the nation to answer that call.

The GINGERS project has always been an artist-driven project made possible by the help of individuals. We need your help to find out where to go and who to photograph in the U.S.A.

Get Involved

 

*The map is an evolving visual of the GINGERS OF AMERICA project and is based on information provided by participants and those who have submitted interest in taking part in the project.

It does not accurately represent the distribution of the Ginger population in the United States. Help us improve it by contributing to it! All data is anonymised and held in confidence and will be used to help plan the next location for GINGER portraits.

 
Follow the Project

You can follow along on YouTube as we travel across America in 2024, documenting ginger people and continuing our over decade-long Gingers photo series.

The Photographer

Kieran Dodds (b. 1980) is an award-winning Scottish photographer known for his research-driven photo stories and evocative portraiture. After studying Zoology at the University of Aberdeen, he trained as a press photographer. His career took off when his series The Bats of Kasanka won a first prize at the World Press Photo awards. This launched over a decade of acclaimed documentary projects on the interplay between environment, culture, and identity.

Dodds’ work has appeared in numerous exhibitions as well as press including National Geographic, The New York Times, and Smithsonian. His photobooks are GINGERS, the little book of GINGERS, The Church Forests of Ethiopia, and Now We See: Glimpses of New Jerusalem. A Pilgrim’s Guide to Heading Home..

He currently lives in Edinburgh with his wife Caz and their twin daughters, both of whom are ginger and feature in the ongoing GINGERS series.

Kieran Dodds
As Featured In