Since 2006, JR has exhibited his photographs freely on the streets of the world, attracting the glance and the curiosity of thousands of passersby. Armed with paper and glue, the French photographer has worked on various projects; all of them aiming to deliver a strong message in often forgotten, unnoticed or sometimes unwanted targeted locations.
Turning the streets into open-air galleries, JR’s photographs are believed to be the most exhibited in the world. His work mixes art, photography and action dealing with engagement, liberty, identity and limits. JR works illegally, he never asks for permission, nor leaves his name; he conquers the streets with the strength of his ideas, and the contribution of others.
In 2006, after the suburbs riots that involved the burning of cars and public buildings in Paris, JR started working on ‘Portrait of a Generation’. Equipped with a 28 mm camera, he shot close-ups of the young inhabitants who took part in the previous year’s riots, pulling funny yet hostile facial expressions. He then plastered the walls of the bourgeois neighborhood of Paris with those portraits, forcing passersby to see them as humans, and not only immigrant thugs. He justifies the choice of his camera by explaining that “most of the media shots of the rioters were taken with a long lens” indirectly driving people to stereotype them as wild and unapproachable gangsters. This illegal project became publicly approved when the Paris City Hall covered its building with JR’s photos.
It is definitely in 2007 that the world started seeing the young Frenchman as an art-ivist. With his new project Face 2 Face, JR and Marco create the largest illegal photography exhibition of all time. The project involved many photographs of Israeli and Palestinian people, including a rabbi, a priest and an imam, pulling deliberate comic expressions. He then mixed them up and pasted them on the Separation Wall Security Fence between the two countries in conflict, and in 8 other cities. The message was simple yet striking: despite religious and racial disputes, everybody is equal and similar when asked to wear a funny face in front of an objective.
In 2011, JR wins the TED Prize, an exceptional award offering US $100,000 to a creative individual to use towards ‘one wish to change the world’. In the introductory speech of his upcoming project that he called Inside Out, JR explains; ‘I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project and together we’ll turn the world… Inside Out’.
Since then, the project Inside Out has allowed people around the planet to form group actions and to, as he explains, “transform messages of personal identity into works of art.” The process is as simple as genius, people in the world were encouraged to participate by taking portraits of themselves, uploading them on the website, and explaining the cause they are standing up for or against. JR then printed the 36” x 53” black and white photos he received and mailed them back to the participants who could then paste them in their communities. Up to now, over 150,000 posters have been shipped in more than 90 different countries. People have used the project to protest for hundreds of reasons. For instance and amongst many others, in Venezuela, 52 posters of women whose children have been victims of violence were pasted in the city of Caracas, known for the wilderness of its crimes.
The global art project was only supposed to last for a year but is still ongoing more than 2 years after its creation. Even though JR now defines himself as “just the printer”, the world is keeping an eye open for the next project of the photo-artist, whose work is hard to forget once we’ve digged into it.
