News: French street artist JR seeks Atlanta faces this week

The Inside Out Project, created by the renowned French graffiti artist known as “JR,” is in Atlanta this week inviting residents of the city to add their faces to his work. For his pieces, JR typically flyposts large black-and-white photographic images of people’s faces in public locations.

In 2007, 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, and in 2013, he created a massive work of art consisting of thousands of portraits of locals and tourists in Times Square. His 2017 collaboration with filmmaker Agnès Varda, Faces Places, in which the two traveled the French countryside to meet local residents and produce giant photographic portraits of them, was nominated for an Academy Award.

In 2010, JR won the $100,000 Ted Prize, and he used the prize money to begin funding his Inside Out Project, which seeks to place emphasis on people and their stories by pasting images of their faces in public places.

This week, JR and his team will use a mobile photo studio in a truck, which will travel to several locations to take portraits of Atlantans:

• On Thursday, August 30, the truck will be at 299 North Highland Avenue on the backside of Inman Park restaurant BeetleCat from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• On Friday, August 31, the truck will be at Paris on Ponce on the Atlanta BeltLine, 716 Ponce de Leon Place NE, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Participants can have their photo taken and then paste their images onto collage murals in each location.