New law requires cosmetology classes to give instruction on all hair types from the kinkiest to the straightest

As of 1 September, a new law in New York state requires hairdressers studying cosmetology to be trained to work with all hair types.

“This is about equal access to service,” assembly member Michaelle Solages, who sponsored the law, said in a statement earlier this year. “No New Yorker should ever walk into a salon and be turned away or receive substandard care because of their hair texture. Now, with the adoption of this legislation, they won’t have to.”

For his latest in a series of work photographing people with red hair, photographer Kieran Dodds interviewed and made portraits of hundreds of people with ginger hair, with widely varying backgrounds and heritage, across the US between 2024 and 2026. Dodds asked each interviewee the same question at the end of the interview: What unites the states? We hear some of the responses

• A new book of this work is available to preorder here

‘Although almost everyone featured in the project is ginger, it is not really about hair. It is structured around themes raised time and again in the conversations I had with portrait sitters, and which I reflected on during my travels in the states’ – Kieran Dodds