J J J J R

OK, so sadly I won't be writing about the music producer J.R. Rotem, who you may have heard in a whole host of songs combining 1 to 3 elements of 'J.J.J.J.R', a large air-horn or 'Beluga Heights'.

No instead I'm talking about JR, the French 'pioneering' photographer, 'pioneering' perhaps as much in his political motivations and ideals as he is a visualist and artist.

He's responsible for some incredible 'installations'...well, more 'mega-prints' in the biggest art gallery in the world:  The planet is his canvas.  Just like his prints, his lens isn't focused on the ordinary or the conventional. His website biog states that his work  fuses "Art and Act, talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit."  After kick-starting his photographic career capturing the portraits of Parisian gangsters and displaying them  in the bourgeoisie districts, JR was always going to continue to make bold, politically and culturally subversive statements. The boldest of all being his 'Face to Face' project. It was largest illegal photography exhibition ever, putting photographs of Israeli and Palestinian faces side by side in cities either side of the border as well as either side of the fence that separates them.
More recently his 'Women' project aimed to represent and highlight the dignity of women who are the target of conflicts.  As with much of his work, once the original 'exhibitions' have been completed, from walls in India, trains and bridges in Kenya to the hill slums of Brazil, it's taken to European cities to be displayed and reinterpreted. The 'Women' photography was displayed along the Seine and there is a video on the site which captures its creation and its passing.

In many ways JR's work is about hope. It's about representing the unrepresented and those discriminated against (rightly or wrongly) in such a way as to be provocative and challenging.  The focus and placement of his work forces the observer to remove the boundaries of subject and object.  More than that, there is a humour in his work that subverts any political or cultural discrimination of the subjects and for that reason he creates a glimmer of a changed world for just a flitting moment.  The disposability of his installations, on piles of bricks, soon-to-be-demolished buildings', highlight the transience of these moments and are brilliantly summed up by the final piece of the Women exhibition washing into the gutter in Paris. (See video on his homepage [below]).

Whether I keep being drawn to the anonymous type or its just a popular artist's marketing trend, JR is another one keeping his identity a secret.  If the work that Bansky, Miss Bugs and JR produce is anything to go by, I'm looking forward to finding some more of the 'shy artist' types.

J.R

http://jr-art.net/

J.R. Rotem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._Rotem