JR is a street artist who has taken the limits of the streets to some amazing places far beyond the predictable. And he is a photographer who has also fought to uncover some incredibly poignant subject matter.
From finding a camera on the subway in Paris he has gone on to places like Sierra Leone, New Delhi, Cambodia, Liberia, Southern Sudan and Kenya to photograph portraits of women under pressure and under fire.
His Women are Heroes project has taken anonymous women, who break the media celebration of stereotypical beauty and youth. The project has also worked with the real architecture of our world streetscapes in gigantic, awe-inspiring ways.
As his
website explains:
"JR creates "Pervasive Art" that spreads uninvited on the buildings of the slums around Paris, on the walls in the Middle-East, on the broken bridges in Africa or the favelas in Brazil. People who often live with the bare minimum discover something absolutely unnecessary. And they don't just see it, they make it. Some elderly women become models for a day; some kids turn artists for a week. In that Art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators."
This English trailer for his Women are Heroes film has just been released. Enjoy!