JR is a Paris-bred street artist, or as he prefers, photograffeur, a play on the words photographer and graffeur, the French word for graffiti artist. As his origin story goes, he started out writing graffiti until he happened upon a camera on the Paris Metro. He began photographing the youth of the banlieues and wheat-pasted their larger-than-life-size images all over the suburbs. Illegally, of course.
In 2006, returning to his native Paris one year after the country erupted in youth riots, JR snapped photos of the suburban youth from Montfermeil, Clichy-sous-Bois, and others. This time, instead of posting the young, brown faces in their own neighborhoods, he took their visages straight to the center of bourgeois Paris. The city ultimately embraced the work, "Portraits of a Generation," and in fact wrapped it's own city hall with these images, most likely in hopes of diffusing tensions and promoting tolerance.
TED lauds his work as "pervasive art" that engenders two important things:
"The images are transported to London, New York, Berlin or Amsterdam where new people interpret them in the light of their own personal experience. And ongoing art and craft workshops in the originating community continue the work of celebrating everyone who lives there." [bold emphasis added by me]
The TED prize committee hopes that JR's work could catalyze the entire TED community to support a philanthropic art project.
Now with a hundred grand in hand, what will the photograffeur do next? Previous TED awardees, such as Bill Clinton, Bono, and writer Dave Eggers, have started various awareness campaigns. The most recent awardee, The Naked Chef Jamie Oliver has used the money to promote healthier eating habits in North America and the UK. Knowing JR who keeps the local community in mind, he will probably keep doing his thing but just go bigger. Who knows? Maybe this time next year satellite pictures of North Korea will have gigantic photographs of youthful eyes staring up at us.
Here's a great video of his recent work displayed along the Seine in Paris.