He is a graffiti artist with a camera – and a huge imagination. His name is JR, and he is transforming the streets of many of our cities with his extraordinary street art/photography.
JR (he uses his initials because of the illegal nature of his work) pastes huge, (usually) B&W photographs of people in high-visibility public spaces such as walls and windows of buildings, rooftops, side panels of buses, etc creating a new kind of graffiti in the guise of street art/photography.
The themes of his photographs highlight a deep concern for humanity, drawing attention to social causes, wars, human emotions and suffering – challenging many of our present-day (preconceived) notions.
For instance, in a write-up on JR’s street art, the Tate Modern Gallery website cites, “His work with Palestinian and Israeli citizens explored the similarities of their daily lives, rather than focusing on the ever present divide, highlighting fundamental human emotions.”
A Frenchman who remains incognito (like Banksy), JR describes himself and his work on his own website:
“As an undercover photographer, JR transforms his pictures into posters and makes open space photo galleries out of our streets. An acute observer of our time, as comfortable in cozy neighborhoods as in urban ghettos, he questions pedestrians with the exhibitions he mounts on their everyday commutes.
Using a camera he found once in the subway, JR finds inspiration in informal encounters he makes following his travels and his intuitions.
From 2001, he has been pointing his camera to a number of communities (writers, breakdancers, freestylers...), and worked with popular actors and musicians such as Vincent Cassel, IAM or the Gotan Project.
From 2004, he has been working on the 28 millimetres project, the first part of which – Portrait of a generation – led him up to the New York Times front page. The large size pictures of the Montfermeil and Clichy-sous-Bois youth have been notably displayed on the walls of the European Center for Photography and the square of the Hotel de Ville, in Paris.
His pictures are beginning to sell at Hotel Drouot of Paris; he keeps on planning unauthorized exhibitions of large size pictures such as in Rome or in Wuppertal (Germany). He is currently working on the second and third parts of the 28 millimetres project in Middle East and Brazil.
The 3rd stage of the 28 millimeters project – Women Are Heroes – has already led him to Africa in post-conflicting zones to shoot the women with whom he wishes to share painful stories and to testify their desire to live. Their portraits were already pasted in Sierra-Leone and in Liberia. In 2008-2009, JR will develop this project in India and in Asia.”
To learn more about JR and his extraordinary street art, please visit JR’s website (showing videos of how his street art is installed), or the Lazarides Gallery JR page, or the Tate Modern Gallery JR page.
JR’s 28 millimetres project has its special place here.
[Citation: JR’s website, Lazarides Gallery website, Tate Modern Gallery website, 28 millimeters project website. JR’s street installation image reproduced here from the Tate Modern Gallery website (courtesy the artist and the Lazarides Gallery).]
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