TED: Hi JR

JR: Hi There.

TED: Can you hear me well?

JR: Yea, kind of.

TED: Ah, ok. Well apparently you are working on a large project. Can you tell me how this 28 millimetre project started?

JR: Yes, I'll try.

In 2004 I went to Clichy Montfermeil in the suburbs of Paris to paste large photos of the inhabitants of that neighborhood.

A year later, the riots started from there in 2005, and the first car that burnt in front of my picture, [brought] my artwork in front of the media suddenly. And I came back in that neighborhood in 2006 with my 28 millimeter to take their photo with their trust. So I portrayed them playing their own caricature, the way we see them from Paris. And I started pasting them in the East of Paris and in the Bourgeois areas of Paris. And you go from someone in the media that you can't recognize, to someone that you can go and knock on his door, because on the photos is his name, his age and even his building number.

In the same media that I saw the suburbs, I saw, everyday, the Middle East conflict. So with my friend Marco we decided to go there and just have a look by ourselves.

With our French passport we could go from both sides really easily, and we realized that we were the ones who had to photograph them, and face them face to face on both sides of the wall. So not an Israeli or a Palestinian could have done that project.

We met Israel teachers, Palestinian teachers, taxi drivers, students. We photographed them face to face playing their own caricatures, the caricature they see of the other through the media. And we pasted them on their walls, without any authorizations on both sides. And you know what? We thought that we would be kidnapped, that we would be arrested, that we would be evicted, and we just came back with sunburns! The limits in that place were not where we think they are.

How can you imagine that a guy in Ramallah, accept that you paste an Israeli face on his house, outside of his own door, and he will have to explain everyday why he accepted to have an Israeli in front of his door. The real heroes are sometimes not where you think they are, they are right there in the street everywhere around you.

In the Middle East I realized that it was the first time I confronted my work to people who didn't have museums around them.

Arriving in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan or Kenya, I started by Africa, I realized that the men were holding the streets and I would have to confront them. They would be the curators of my exhibitions, so I chose the women as subjects, because I think that the woman reveals the whole condition of the society. I wanted to confront those portraits with the streets.

I started looking for anonymous women that are daily heroes, photograph them and paste them in their own city, and make their story travel. I wanted to show another image of themselves.

So I have travelled in other countries and meet other women and highlight them in the same way.

In Kenya for example, I used vinyl on the rooftops so that it would protect them from the rain. In each place, the people had to find their own interest in the project. In places like Kenya or Brasil, the confrontation and experience with the people was so strong that it made us want to come back and keep a link with those people. And there is even more places that I want to come back and continue because sometimes the wave of the project, can be read even when the photo is done. You know, the photo is like paper, it's ephemeral, it goes with time, but it always stays as an image in your head.

I'm not trying to change the world, but you know when I see a smile up there in the favelas or down there in Cambodia, in a way I feel like I achieved my goal.