Redheads

Redheads – Meyerowitz’s iconic series first published in 1991, Redheads contains all of his work around the redheaded community that he photographed for over 20 years.

Meyerowitz, now 84, began making Redheads in 1976, during a summer vacation in Cape Cod. The photographer had recently acquired a large-format view camera and was looking to experiment with portraiture: a more considered, intimate practice than his signature, snap-and-run street photography. “I started to make a few portraits, just by chance, and I noticed that an unusually large percentage of these were of redhaired or freckled people,” he remembers. It was their heliotropic quality – the way their hair and skin were transformed by the summer weather – that Meyerowitz found most compelling. “ The sun ignites redheads: the hair gets brighter, the skin gets freckles showing up. And maybe that kind of colouration played a role in catching my interest.