JR

Described by Shepard Fairey as “the most ambitious street artist working today”, the 29 year old Parisian known simply as JR considers himself neither a street artist nor a photographer, a claim that is somewhat outrageous if you are familiar with his work. Emerging in 2004 with his Portraits of a Generation project, in which he photographed the younger residents of the Cité des Bosquets housing project in Paris, JR’s large-scale monotone images are these days somewhat unmistakable.

The concept behind Portraits of a Generation was to force people to consider the social and media representation of this generation of youths that were dismissed as a sub-class and driven out of the city to live in the banlieues. During the project, evidence, if any was needed that there was in fact a frustrated generation residing in the city’s North Eastern areas arrived in the form of twenty days of civil arrest which much like last year’s London riots triggered similar situations around the nation. JR focussed primarily on the African and Maghrebian communities whose close-up portraits he took with a 28mm wide angle lens and then pasted up around the projects, symbolically suggesting that they were tired of being overlooked. The project gained recognition from the city of Paris when they allowed the artist to paste his images on buildings, rather than ritually removing them and with that, allowed the project’s message to reach the very centre of the city that it’s critique was aimed at.

Following the success of this first project, JR moved to pastures new for Face2Face, this time entering the prickly topic of the Israel/Palestine dispute by pasting his now customary giant, close-up portraits of people from either camp side by side on the separation wall and in some of the region’s most disrupted areas. This desire to engage with social and political issues forced people to take JR seriously and (whilst street art remains dismissed by many) consider him less as a pest more as a social commentator of sorts. It is this aspect of his work that perhaps makes it easy to see why in 2011, he received the TED Prize, although it would be unfair to merely credit his work for the subjects it broaches.

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JR photographed and painted by Liu Bolin in NYC

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Women Are Heroes, Morro da Providencia 2008

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Untitled, Grottaglie

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Inside Out, North Dakota

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Wrinkles of the City, Downtown Los Angeles 2012

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Women Are Heroes, Morro da Providencia 2008

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Inside Out, NYC

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Tunisia, Sidi Bouzid

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Wrinkles of the City, Los Angeles 2011

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Women Are Heroes, Monrovia 2008

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Face2Face, Jerusalem 2007

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Women Are Heroes, Kenya 2008

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Untitled, NYC

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Wrinkles of the City, Downtown Los Angeles 2012

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Portrait of a Generation, Les Bosquets Paris 2004

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Wrinkles of the City, West Hollywood 2011

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Women Are Heroes, Kenya 2008

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Portrait of a Generation, Paris 2006

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Wrinkles of the City, Shanghai 2010

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Inside Out, Thailand

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Women Are Heroes, Morro da Providencia 2008

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Women are Heroes, Ile Saint Louis 2009

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Untitled, India 2008

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Face2Face, Bethlehem

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Inside Out, Israel

His international Women are Heroes project showcased some exquisite use of the vast canvases that he was beginning to engage with, perhaps the finest example being the Morro da Providência favela in Sao Paolo which he brought to life by pasting pairs of eyes onto the buildings, creating an abstract and alluring scene from the undulating district. In applications of his work like this, the Frenchman uses guile and foresight to create breathtaking three-dimensional projects that transform landscapes, all the while doing so by imprinting them with depictions of their residents. For JR, the symbolism of where the images are pasted is as important as the images themselves as it is through the combination of both that his commentary exists.

Wrinkles of the City, his latest escapade, pays homage to the elder statesmen/women of the areas in which he has engaged with this time around and now sees the artist do away with any background in his gigantic photocopies, allowing the subjects of his photographs to better interact with and stand out from the walls and roofs which they (albeit temporarily adorn). Instrumental to all facets of JR’s work are the communities that he explores, both in the capturing of the images and in the dissemination of them in the areas concerned. An exhibition last year at the Centre Pompidou provided museum goers with the opportunity to print their own (suitably large) portrait at a special photo booth with the opportunity to then use it however they liked, unsurprisingly, a huge amount found their way onto walls around the city with plenty still remaining intact today. To get as many people actively engaged in an art project as JR does time after time, is an achievement in itself that makes him more than worthwhile keeping tabs on, but to routinely collaborate with and inspire communities in the manner he does as well, that is really quite rare indeed.