Photographer Captures True Beauty Of 130 Redheads From Around The World

Red is the rarest hair colour in the world, with only 2% of the population able to claim they are sporting naturally ginger locks. A compelling new series of photographs by American photographer Brian Dowling celebrates redheads around the world with beautiful and naturalistic images of women with red hair.

The entertainment photographer, who has shot portraits of A-list gingers including Julia Roberts and Amy Adams, spent the past three summers travelling the world in search of his subjects, eventually visiting 20 countries and taking photos of over 130 redheaded women across cities as diverse as Warsaw, Poland and Melbourne, Australia.

The purpose of this project is to celebrate the beauty and uniqueness of women with red hair around the globe, focusing on everyday people, as opposed to pop-culture icons, actors or models.

Red hair happens when a person’s parents both have the recessive MC1R gene, but even when this is the case, the chance of them birthing a redhead is still an astoundingly low 25%. Scotland and Ireland, at 13% and 10% of their respective populations, have the world’s highest concentrations of redheads. Dowling’s red-hued photo series however, reminds us of the many other countries where naturally red hair can be found.

Dowling launched a Kickstarter campaign to help pull the funds together for a book of this unique project, which will be aptly titled Redhead Beauty. The campaign is already almost at double its financial goal, with the aim of the book being to tear down any stereotypes of redheads. This is also why the Berlin-based photographer opted to shoot the images without a makeup artist and mainly natural light, with minimal manipulation.

As the world awaits his book, all of Dowling’s photos are available to view on his website, a beautiful celebration of red hair and the women who wear it proudly everyday.

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