JR

As we start our journey into Jahangir Selimxanov workshop , we discussed many thoughts and get exercisers which is about to open create and update our creativity. As I mention in article 60 , we suppose to choose 2-3 innovators in any art sphere and start to observe his or her art experience more deeply. I decided to start with JR, photographer and artist whose identity is unconfirmed. JR began his career as a teenage graffiti artist who was by his own admission not interested in changing the world, but in making his mark on public space and society. His graffiti often targeted precarious places like rooftops and subway trains, and he enjoyed the adventure of going to and painting in these spaces. After finding a camera in the Paris Metro, JR and his friends began to document the act of his graffiti painting. At 17, he began applying photocopies of these photographs to outdoor walls.

JR later travelled throughout Europe to meet the people whose mode of artistic expression involved the use of outdoor walls. Then, he began wondering about the vertical limits, the walls and the facades that structure cities. After observing the people he met and listening to their message, JR pasted their portraits up in the streets and basements and on the roof tops of Paris.

Between 2004 and 2006, JR created Portraits of a Generation, portraits of young people from the housing projects around Paris that he exhibited in huge format. This illegal project became official when the City of Paris put JR’s photos up on buildings. At the beginning of his projects, JR wanted to bring art into the street: "In the street, we reach people who never go to museums."

In 2007, with Marco, JR put up enormous photos of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities on either side of the Separation Barrier. Upon his return to Paris, he pasted these portraits up in the capital. For the artist, this artistic act is first and foremost a human project: "The heroes of the project are all those who, on both sides of the wall, allowed me to paste the portraits on their houses."

In 2008, JR undertook an international tour for Women Are Heroes, a project in which he highlights the dignity of women who are often targets during conflicts.

JR calls himself an "urban artivist", he creates pervasive art that he puts up on the buildings in the Paris area projects, on the walls of the Middle East, on the broken bridges of Africa or in the favelas of Brazil. During the pasting phase, community members take part in the artistic process. In Brazil, for example, children became artists for a week. In these artistic acts, no scene separates the actors from the spectators.^[21]

After having exhibited in the cities from which JR’s subjects came, the photos traveled from New York to Berlin, Amsterdam to Paris  As JR remains anonymous and does not frame his huge portraits, he leaves a space for an encounter between a subject/protagonist and a passerby/interpreter, and this is the essence of his work.
This is all that easy pops up when you google nickname of Parisian photographer . His work speak for himself, I personally enjoyed his huge sized portraits created towards different struggles of life