Photographer Bianca Duimel's stunning portraits of redheads helping combat bullying

Photographer Bianca Duimel is capturing portraits of redhead subjects to help combat redhead discrimination. Photo / Bianca Duimel

A New Zealand photographer is capturing hundreds of redheads on camera in a drive to fight bullying.

Award-winning photographer Bianca Duimel's first book of portraits featuring 70 redhead models, Red Matters, was a resounding success and helped raise funds for Kidsline.

Now, she is to release her second book later this month which will feature 100 striking images that Duimel hopes will help combat bullying and discrimination.

"People just don't think that bullying redheads is an issue, that it's a big joke. But it causes a lot of harm and more needs to be done to stop it," Duimel said.

The artist was looking for model in a new project for the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography awards when she was struck by radiant colour of a girl's hair in her child's gymnastic class in Counties Manukau.

The subsequent images won awards and high praise but Duimel was rocked when the girl's mother told her daughter had been picked on because of her hair colour.
"Her mum was also a redhead and had been bullied all her life for having red hair and just this whole paradox of people loving the red hair but redheads actually being bullied I found it so odd and thought, 'Gosh, I could do something about this'," she said.

Duimel thought that her art could help break the stigma surrounding red hair and decided to pursue a book of portraits.

An open call for redhead models on Facebook in 2016 resulted in almost 700 messages from willing participants.

"It just went insane," Duimel said.

"I ended up photographing 70 people, which was a massive amount of work, but the result was this little book which was gorgeous and sold out pretty quickly."

Her follow-up book Little Red Matters focused on 100 children models from all over New Zealand, from "Invercargill to Whangarei and anywhere in between".

She photographed them at her studio in Auckland, before moving to Matamata and taking portraits there.

The photoshoots gave the children, many of whom had suffered bullying and name-calling over the colour of their hair, a major confidence boost, Duimel said.

"They would come to the door and be absolutely beaming and ecstatic that, 'I'm here because my hair is red and I'm awesome and I'm special'. That got me every time. And later when they saw their portraits, and their parents were so proud, I felt that I had done my job really. It was a lovely project."

Photoshoots for the third book begins next month, with Tauranga's arts festival, Escape! Setting up a studio for Duimel to photograph subjects during the event.

A small portion of book sales goes to Kidsline, New Zealand's only 24/7 helpline for children and teens.