He is coming to Birmingham in September as one of the artists with an exhibition at Samford University, \u201cHeading Home, Glimpses of New Jerusalem.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibition is separate from his gingers project. But Dodds wants to use his first visit to Alabama to add portraits to his work, including, hopefully, some Black Alabamians who carry the trait. He plans to be here for several days starting Sept. 10.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some identity politics, we use a trait to isolate ourselves,\u201d Dodds said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to use it to connect people across the world. And that seems to be what people understand when they see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dodds finds people who self-identify as ginger through his website.<\/a><\/p>\n Those who want to be considered for possible inclusion in the project can upload a photo of themselves and share any relevant family history.<\/p>\n When he started his first gingers project, Dodds said he was inspired by Renaissance paintings that feature ginger characters, including Jesus and Mary, which was intriguing because they were Middle Easterners depicted by artists from southern Europe.<\/p>\n His first book, \u201cGingers,\u201d published in 2020, included portraits made in Jamaica and in the city of Perm in Russia, as well as the United Kingdom. <\/p>\n In those places, Dodds found ginger people with family connections across Europe, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and east Asia, he said.<\/p>\n Dodds said it is human nature to be intrigued by differences like hair and skin color. He said drawing attention to differences must be done with care, but is worth doing in the right context.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re worried you\u2019re going to step in a sort of a landmine, a conversational landmine,\u201d Dodds said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s good to have these opportunities to remember that we are one human species, one group of people, and interconnections are part of the human story.<\/p>\n \u201cThe story of human migration throughout the world is something we should be interested in, and one that transcends political and national boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n Dodds said the term \u201cginger\u201d is more descriptive than \u201cred-haired\u201d because of the range of colors resulting from the trait, shades that carry a golden or copper glow.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can be from a sort of dark brown with that golden to almost strawberry blonde,\u201d Dodds said. \u201cSo there\u2019s a spectrum. Ginger is encompassing that spectrum. I\u2019m fairly broad in my interpretation.\u201d<\/p>\n The ginger is a recessive genetic characteristic. That means families can pass it down invisibly for generations.<\/p>\n Dodds has examples of that in Gingers of America.<\/p>\n They include one portrait of a Native American young woman whose family had no recollection of anyone but Cherokees going back for generations.<\/p>\n \u201cHer hair was this incredible ruby color,\u201d Dodds said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a beautiful, dark tone, quite different from other ones. So it really is a global tree.\u201d<\/p>\n Dodds studied zoology at the University of Aberdeen, where he was editor of the student newspaper and earned a degree in 2002. He learned that his favorite part of the academic work was documenting research with photographs.<\/p>\n \u201cTo some people, writing comes most naturally, or speaking. But it\u2019s when I\u2019ve got a camera in my hands that I feel that I can interact with the world and start to process it,\u201d Dodds said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just the way I encounter the world. When I see something awesome or beautiful or the opposite,\u201d Dodds said. <\/p>\n After college, Dodds became a staff photographer for the Evening Times in Glasgow, where he covered news, sports, and feature projects such as great white sharks in South Africa and evangelist Billy Graham\u2019s final crusade in New York. <\/p>\n His freelance collection, \u201cThe Bats of Kasanka,\u201d<\/a> documenting the migration of millions of fruit bats to Zambia, the world\u2019s largest migration of mammals, won first place in the World Press Photo awards for nature stories in 2006.<\/p>\n Dodds\u2019 first book, \u201cGingers,\u201d was released in November 2020. He later did a pocket-size version, \u201cThe Little Book of Gingers.\u201d<\/p>\n Dodds, who lives in Edinburgh, has a personal connection to the gingers project because he is ginger, as are his twin daughters.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes stories come to you and they sort of pull you along. You can\u2019t resist their gravity,\u201d Dodds said. <\/p>\n \u201cPeople respond to it in a way that I don\u2019t always get for stories I pour time and effort and energy into. And what has intrigued me and kept me going with this story is being able to see different cultures and places.\u201d<\/p>\n On previous trips to America, Dodds has visited Arkansas, Oklahoma, and the East Coast, including New York and Washington, D.C. <\/p>\n Dodds said he got a strong response on a visit to Portland, Ore., where he said hundreds of people wanted to be included.<\/p>\n On his upcoming trip, he plans to make portraits in Tennessee and California, as well as Alabama.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019d love to do in Alabama is find people whose family stories or their story today gives us a glimpse into the story of that part of America, the history, but also contemporary stories,\u201d Dodds said.<\/p>\n Dodds said he wants to ask Americans what unites them, because so much of what is written and said is about the divisions in the country.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time I do these shoots, I just feel like so thankful to meet everyday Americans who just talk about their life, trying to educate their kids, do a job, just have their family around for dinner, just those good everyday things,\u201d Dodds said.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Scotland prepared for a national vote on independence from the United Kingdom in 2014, photojournalist Kieran Dodds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-129696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Kieran](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/PHBOF7IJC5HV7D7VWXMHGVI4NI.jpg\")
Lakia Jones, Cherokee Nation, United Keetowah Band, Oklahoma\/ Gingers of America (c) Kieran DoddsKieran Dodds<\/p>\n![\"Kieran](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/LC4YWTF3UZA6ZA3GC2T47KVCP4.jpg\")
Gabriella Cray, Maryland\/ Gingers of America (c) Kieran DoddsKieran Dodds<\/p>\n