‘It creates a community’: one photographer’s intimate portraits of more than 500 redheads

To sit for a portrait in this singular artistic endeavour, you must be two things: born with red hair, and open to revealing something unique on the inside

Keith Barraclough, a former photographer for National Geographic, admits that the project he and his wife Kate Lorenz created in 2013 was born by chance. They are not redheads; they have no redheaded children. “It was happenstance,” he tells me over a Zoom call from New York. “I was doing a corporate shoot and a guy came in wearing a white shirt. He was a redhead and had this presence about him. He looked as if he’d just stepped off a boat from Ireland at Ellis Island in 1880. I turned to my assistant and said: ‘I would love to get that guy in the studio and have some fun with him.’”

More than 10 years on, Barraclough has photographed more than 500 people for The Redhead Project. The main criterion is simple: the subjects must be natural redheads (although he does sometimes photograph an older person, who is no longer ginger, holding a photo of themselves from the past). Most of their subjects are found via social media, particularly Instagram, where the project has a strong footprint. “It isn’t enough for them to simply say: ‘I’m a redhead and I’d like to be part of the project,’” says Barraclough. “You have to be willing to share your story,” adds Lorenz, who does much of the organisation and social media. “We ask them which part of the project resonated. Then we have a back and forth to come up with possible ideas for the shoot.” Continue reading...


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