As a clandestine photographer, JR converts his pictures into posters and transforms our streets into open air photo galleries. An acute observer of our times, as comfortable in cozy neighborhoods as in the depths of urban ghettos, JR challenges pedestrians with the exhibitions he mounts on their street corners, sidewalks and building walls.

Armed with a camera he once found in the subway, JR finds inspiration in the informal and spontaneous encounters he makes in his travels.

Since 2004, he has worked on the 28 millimeters project - which was shown at Found Gallery (previously The Orphanage) in November of 2006. The first part of this project, Portrait of a Generation, led him to the front page of the New York Times. The large format pictures of the Montfermeil and Clichy-sous-Bois youth have been notably displayed on the walls of the European Center for Photography and in the square of the Hotel de Ville, in Paris. The second and third parts of the 28 millimeters project brought JR to both the Middle East and Brazil.

Currently, his pictures sell at the Hotel Drouot of Paris, yet he continues to plan unauthorized exhibitions of his large format pictures in cities such as Rome and Wuppertal (Germany).

JR is always imagining new ways of exhibiting in urban spaces, where the choice of streets and locations can reveal the meaning of the pictures themselves. He intentionally keeps his distance from cultural institutions, except when they add value to his projects.

(Adapted from Emile Abinal’s French by Brady Brim-DeForest)