His name is JR. That's all he goes by. His subjects live in the favelas of Rio, the blood-crusted shanty-towns of Liberia, behind the barrier wall in Gaza. He takes pictures, he tells them. He holds his camera six inches from their face and asks them to do anything but smile. Then back at home in Paris, the twenty-six-year-old Frenchman blows up his black-and-white photos to the size of city buildings. Works big enough to be visible from outer space.
Some photos go into custom art books, but most take up space on the battered city and slum canvases where JR first shot them. India. Sudan. Sierra Leone. Cambodia. With a bucket of glue and paint rollers, he and his friends rappel down crumbling brick walls at night, slop on the glue, and smooth the gargantuan images over. It's guerrilla art, as unavoidable as it is imposing. Read full article here.
Below is some of his work.
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