JR is a street artist who uses photography as his medium. JR true identity isn’t known but he was born in France in the year 1983. JR is known for his very large black and white portraits of people done on a large scale, many times the photographs are 4 by 6 feet. He often pastes them on tops of roofs or sides of  buildings. His art usually has a message and a cause and the local community helps out by assisting him with the pasting of the photographs.
Price range information: Â Photographs of his works sell usually in editions of 3 for $30,000 euros each. What a great business artist.
Winner of the TED Prize in 2010. This award is given to an artist that has a vision to change the world. The artist also receives $100,000.
Started pasting photographs on walls at the age of 17. Then went around the globe to see and learn from other graffiti and street artists.
Refers to himself as an urban activist. Many of his projects have to do with making people aware of what is happening around them, not just what the media reports. Some of these examples would be a series done called FACE2FACE which showed Israelis and Palestinians that held the same jobs, making the same faces. The pieces were pasted on the great Separation Wall. This project was made into a film titled FACES and this movie when some prizes in the film/entertainment industry.
Another well received idea was a series titled WOMAN ARE HEROES. For this theme JR took pictures of women in war zones, places that the media shows on television but most people don’t think about the harsh reality. In this clip we listen to some interviews for this project. These women have had some very bad experiences in life and the interviews are very emotional as are the photographs.
In this clip we see JR at work in Berlin, Germany.
Here we have a great interview with the artist.
The best thing about JR is that he loves to produce works to challenge people to think about their environment and to try and bring art to people who never visit museums.
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