Together, a group of red-headed women just broke almost every rule about redheads, color, clothing, and photography in Breda, Holland!
In 2007 I worked together with Dutch painter Bart Rouwenhorst, who paints (only) redhead women. His aim was to organise an international redhead day in Breda, the Netherlands; my hometown. When creating my series of publicity photos I came up with the idea to stretch photographic laws, by NOT portraying the models with red hair against a white or green background, but with colour: RED!
After the successful try out, my dress code was red at the redhead day photo shoot, with a red background. This was a bit akward for some, "I never wear red, as they say we can't with our hair colour". But if they wanted me to take their picture, they had to. It was the only way, so on they went. In 2 hours almost one hundred natural redheads posed for me.
We had perfect natural lighting and this being the first mass redhead gathering in Breda, the atmosphere was divine. Recognition, happiness and a few tears were shed. In return for their consent, all people who posed received their photo for free. After I e-mailed these, my mailbox almost exploded with thanks and compliments.
"I will never ever be unsure about my red hair again" - "Thank you for showing me how beautiful I am" and, "I just bought a red sweater!" Reading this made my heart jump. But I felt the lucky one, being able to connect, SEE and capture all these beautiful people, with the rarest hair colour in the world. Red hair is going to be extinct at some point in the future, as the 'ginger-gene' is recessive and will dissapear by evolution.
How lucky I am to have had the opportunity to use my photography skills to empower all these beautiful people,
and I would like to do this way more!
-Melanie Rijkers is a regional photographer for A Beautiful Body Project based in Breda, Holland. To schedule a shoot with Melanie and/or learn more about her work, click here: http://www.artstudio23.com/
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