French photographer to hold exhibition over ‘redhead’ abuse

Paris, Feb 25 (IANS) A French photographer is set to hold an exhibition to highlight a prejudice known as "Gingerism", the country's ginger or red-haired people face, a media report said.

"It's a form of racism that has persisted for centuries," photographer Pascal Sacleux, a red-head himself, said on Friday whose series of portraits of 30 ginger-haired people has caught the attention of French people.

The English name for the exhibition is "Brittany: Freckles Rock" and the portraits aim to show the beauty of red-heads in the historically Celtic region of western France where many if not most of the country's flame-haired citizens live, The Local news portal reported.

Sacleux wants to promote "la roussitude" (ginger-ness, or ginger-pride), encouraging those born with the world's rarest hair colour to feel proud to be different.

"Many red-heads have really been hurt growing up, and some are destroyed socially," said Sacleux.

So much so that it was too painful a subject for some of the those he tried to photograph, the news portal said.

"Some people refused to meet with me, saying that it would be pointless to rub salt in the wound," explained Sacleux.

Luckily, lots of people saw the point in his exhibition, and the project has been crowd-funded 40 per cent to get the portraits printed onto large canvasses .

The exhibition will be displayed at Rennes airport from the May 1 to June 15.

(This story has not been edited by Social News XYZ staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)