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As a young graffiti artist in Paris, JR could hardly have imagined that he would one day transform landmarks with images of humanity—let alone empower thousands of people to express themselves. But when he found a camera on the subway, at the age of 17, and began posting blown-up snapshots of his peers on the buildings they might tag, he opened a dialogue about street art and its potential as an agent of change, a conversation that continues around the world today.
Over the past decade, JR, now 31, has graduated from underground talent to veritable superstar—known only by his initials but instantly recognizable in his uniform of trilby hat and sunglasses. For his breakout 2004–2006 series, "Portrait of a Generation," the self-proclaimed photograffeur plastered the walls of the La Forestière housing complex in the Paris suburbs with images of local youth. When he won a prestigious TED Prize several years later, he used the attention to launch his "Inside Out" project, an initiative that has attracted roughly 250,000 participants in 140 countries. Its concept is simple and open-ended: Groups of five or more people e-mail the artist their portraits, which are then printed as 36-by-53-inch posters and mailed back to the creators to be used, however they see fit, in the spirit of a personal cause.
"You can find them in a museum in one country, and you might go to jail for posting them in another," says JR, referring, respectively, to a 2011 installation at Paris’s Centre Pompidou and the grave risks that some Iranians took to place posters on the streets of Tehran. "Sometimes people are creating bigger projects than I’ve ever done." That’s saying a lot given that JR has embellished the favelas in Rio, the security barrier in the West Bank, and the Panthéon in Paris, whose dome and interiors are currently lined with portraits of some 4,000 ordinary Frenchmen. At Ellis Island he recently installed archival images of immigrants in once-off-limits areas.
This fall JR plans to debut Les Bosquets, a documentary filmed on the streets of La Forestière that features New York City Ballet dancers (whom he previously photographed for a sexytableau displayed at Lincoln Center this past winter) performing choreography inspired by the 2005 Paris riots. With music by Pharrell Williams, the movie offers a glimpse into the history of not only the housing project but also JR’s practice. "For me the process of making art is much more interesting than the final piece," he says. "My whole body of work is about the process." For more information go to jr-aret .
View a selection of artist JR's large-scale works . **