The anonymous graffiti artist, known as JR, began his large scale (in every sense) artistic career by simply finding a camera on the subway in Paris...
Self Portrait
His first major project was actualized in 2006. The project entitled Portrait of a generation, exhibits portraits of the suburban "thugs" that he posted, in huge formats, in the bourgeois districts of Paris. This illegal project became "official" when the Paris City Hall wrapped its building with JR's photos.
Other projects include:
Face 2 Face: in which he posted huge illuminating portraits of Israelis and Palestinians facing each other in eight cities, as well as on both sides of the Security/ Separation wall.
And Women: a project intending to underline the dignity of women with large scale portraits in Africa, Brazil, India, and Cambodia.
Gaby Wood asks why he does what he does in an article published by the New York Times on February 24, 2011. He responds, “I think it comes from several things, firstly a real curiosity about the world. When I was little, I didn’t really travel — from the suburbs to Paris was already a journey. I had a foreigner’s eye on the city, and I still enjoy that point of view. Then there’s the fact that one of the things that touches me most is injustice. I’m of mixed origins — North Africa, Eastern Europe, Spain — and this generation today, we’re all a little bit from everywhere. My parents were born abroad. I was born in France, but I feel comfortable everywhere — I don’t see the borders.”
To learn more about the artist, visit http://jr-art.net/
Join JR's latest collaborative project and post your own photographic posters.
Join JR in his Inside Out Project- a global graffiti art project. Inside Out is a collaboration between the artist JR, the Ted Prize, and you.
The Inside Out project invites everyone to join in JR's aesthetic: Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world.
Upload a portrait, receive a poster, and post it in your community. To see the thousands of portraits already included in this collaborative graffiti piece, check out the submissions on Inside Out.
“To change the way you see things,” JR says, “is already to change things themselves” (Gaby Wood, NYT).
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