JR

The installation at Ellis Island featured large archival photographs of immigrants displayed throughout the island’s abandoned hospital. For this project, JR decided to photograph recent immigrants and paste their images on the city’s streets, where they and other immigrants are often invisible. The pasting would be made in the heart of Manhattan, on Flatiron plaza, the triangle of pavement between Fifth Avenue, Broadway and East 23rd Street.

JR photographed 16 people who arrived in New York within the last year and made their portraits while they walked down the streets of Nolita, a downtown neighborhood in Manhattan. JR and his team zeroed in on Elmar Aliyev, a 20-year-old waiter at Old Baku, an Azerbaijani restaurant on Ditmas Avenue in Brooklyn. Elmar immigrated to the United States from Azerbaijan last August after he won the green-card lottery. He likes to walk in Central Park and around the Plaza, locations from his favorite movie, “Home Alone 2.” JR liked the way Aliyev swung his arms when he walked.

Aliyev’s picture was then printed on 62 strips of paper. JR and his 20-person crew took these strips to Flatiron Plaza and began affixing them to the ground at 4 a.m. The pasting took about three and a half hours and resulted in a 150-foot-tall image of Aliyev striding eastward. The sun came up. Pedestrians began to wander over Aliyev. Just as JR had predicted, they often walked right over him without even noticing.

Our partners at The Skateroom, who collaborated with the artist to make this edition, donate a significant part of their profit to support social initiatives that make the world a better place. 

In September 2012, the French artist JR installed a monumental photograph of a curious toddler overlooking the border fence between Mexico and the U.S. More recently, on the last day of that installation, JR launched another site-specific project: an international picnic, with hundreds of people sharing a meal across the fence. JR took a photo of the eyes of a “Dreamer,” one of the young undocumented immigrants who falls under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Then he turned the photo into a surface that visitors could eat off: one eye was on a table in Tecate, on the Mexican side of the border, while the other eye was on a tarp in Tecate, California.

At first, JR thought nobody would show up to his picnic. He wasn’t able to publicize it online, since an advance announcement would have likely resulted in a shutdown by the U.S. Border Patrol, so he had to rely on word of mouth. At 12:30 p.m., nobody was there. “I thought, Oh, maybe it’s just going to be a few of us,” he says. By 1 p.m. there were dozens, and by 2 p.m. hundreds of people had shown up to share the meal.

“The table goes through the wall, and the people eat the same food and drink the same water and listen to the same music,” JR says. “For a minute we were forgetting about it, passing salt and water and drinks as if there were no wall.”

Our partners at The Skateroom, who collaborated with the artist to make this edition, donate a significant part of their profit to support social initiatives that make the world a better place. 

In 2016, JR was invited to the Musée du Louvre. For the event, the artist announced he would make the museum’s famous glass Pyramid disappear. To achieve the feat, JR completely covered the structure with historical photographs pre-dating its construction. What resulted was a surprising anamorphosis: the museum’s forgotten former entrance bursting forth into the present and reclaiming its former glory. In doing so, JR revives the past and evokes the polemic that once surrounded the Pyramid’s construction – inadvertently, we are left to wonder whether we attach meaning to the wrong things, or simply are too quick to forget.

Our partners at The Skateroom, who collaborated with the artist to make this edition, donate a significant part of their profit to support social initiatives that make the world a better place. 

‘Women Are Heroes’ is a project launched by JR to tell the stories of those who are often the first to be harmed in situations of conflict: women. By revealing the unspoken grief of these unsung heroes, JR explores the commonalities that exist in their gaze, and ultimately seeks to discover what unifies us all is humanity. Despite the harshness they have endured, he exposes the light and hope that still exists within them.

When the project launched, JR promised to share their stories with the world – a promise he has since kept, and that we are grateful to continue through the release of these editions.

Our partners at The Skateroom, who collaborated with the artist's estate to make this edition, donate a significant part of their profit to support social initiatives that make the world a better place.