Scarlett and Annie
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Ginger Snaps is the name of my most treasured photography project. Before moving to Morro Bay, I spent five years photographing redheads of all shapes, sizes, ages, and ethnicities across Great Britain. I photographed redheads in the supermarket, on mountain tops, eating their breakfast, piled into English telephone boxes, even in the shower. I started a viral request for redheads and was inundated with pleas to be photographed. With my camera, I wanted to rejoice, celebrate, and idolize the red haired among us. It was so much fun. And yes, I'm one of them.
Jack and Ben
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Helicopter Game
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Freddie
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We guffawed about the lesser of the species — those without red hair. We wondered at their lack of vitality. We shared woeful tales of derision and ridicule at the mercy of playground bullies across the nation, or even as older redheads subjected to blatant prejudice in the hands of some public drunk or even a former Prime Minster who shouted angrily at an egg-thrower, calling him "a Ginger Nut." Redheads in Great Britain, it seems, are fair game. The blanket of political correctness hasn't quite managed to cuddle up to us yet.
While redheads in America are also teased routinely, it does have one apparent difference to the UK. Here, redheads 'come of age' at a certain point and morph from being seen as laughable to alluring. Many who hear about my experience are incredulous. Yes, I still get yelled at in the street. Yes, I even occasionally get spat at. Frequently, some random person makes a very personal remark about my collars matching my cuffs. It is humiliating and just downright rude.
Most of the 400+ subjects I photographed for Ginger Snaps suffer a similar fate to me in their daily lives. The teenagers suffer the worst, of course. They told me things like, "I hate my hair" with a deep sadness in their eyes. A mere handful of redheads didn't believe they had ever been teased.
Phone Box Girls
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Just think for a second about your pre-conceived notions about redheads. Are we fiery-tempered? Are we strong-minded? Do our freckles make us dirty? Do we really glow in the dark? Wouldn't you be a little feisty if you had names hurled at you from a young age?
Sometimes, of course, it is very funny. One of my earliest memories, aged five, is a market stall man calling out to me "Hey, did your Mum leave you out in the rain?" and I was confused and didn't know what he meant. He explained, chuckling, "Your hair's gone rusty!" In childhood drawings, I would draw scenes with mostly redheads, wondering what the world would be like if redheads outnumbered everyone else?
When my son was born five years ago, we didn't know his gender before birth. Texts of congratulations streamed at me with the simple question: "Is it a ginger?" rather than, "Is it a boy or a girl?"' The next step would have been to offer condolences had he been a redhead.
The Butcher
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In fact, my very nickname — which I have gone by since I was at a traditional English boarding school, aged 16 — was bestowed upon me by school boys wanting to insult me. They would loudly shout out "GINGER" and point at me whenever I stepped into a classroom, lunch hall, assembly room. Every single boy at the area would drop to the floor and lie there until I had passed by. They wanted to be as far away from my hair as possible so they didn't catch "the ginger hair disease." This was supposed to make me cry, but I felt like the Queen of Sheba and loved it.
So yes, this project has been cathartic. It has eased my inner distress at being reviled for most of my pre-adult life. We redheads are part of a secret club. Much like VW owners, we give each other the nod, or make complimentary remarks on the hue of each other's locks. And we are grateful that we weren't born in Egyptian times when redheads were burned, or during the witch hunts of eighteenth century England. Even Shakespeare, who himself is alleged to have been a redhead, put red haired wigs on his sinister characters, as a tool to expose them to the audience. We stand out.
George
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With this Ginger Snaps collection, I hope to encourage redheads all over the world to hold their heads up high and be applauded for carrying this mighty crown, not ridiculed for being different. |
Ginger Snaps will be published as a photography coffee table book in September 2012, available on Blurb.com
Michele