It was September 2011 when Cryos International, the biggest sperm bank in the world stopped accepting sperm donations from redheads, alleging that the demand was very low compared to the supply. Marina Rosso was intrigued by the questions that this decision posed. ‘Single women, which actually represent half of client database, have a tendency to choose donors on the basis of their Prince Charming. Increasingly, new lives are designed in an attempt to create the sort of perfect human being. That idea rarely includes a redhead. After centuries of being despised, persecuted or marginalized, could the redheads be eliminated by a conspiracy of online questionnaires, aseptic clinics and frozen sperm?’ the photographer writes on her page to explain the beginning of The Beautiful Gene project. Marina discovered that the sperm bank ‘Cyros has nothing against redheads’. ‘It is only a consequence of the choices of the clients. People don’t have anything against redheads, they simply prefer other characteristics. I thought it would be interesting to portray and analyse that.’ In sort of ‘provoking the system’, she decided to take on the role of a type of geneticist and classify the genetic variations of a specie as a way of preserving its diversity. ‘I started creating a matrix which represents the redhead hair gene into 48 categories, each one matched with 5 different characteristics (sex, height, build, eye colour and hair type).’ She explains on her site. The people in these photographs were found to represent these categories. The work can be found in book form and can be ordered online for 29 euros.