Photography, Graffiti Style

As another avenue to express his art, photographer JR developed “Inside Out,” a participatory art project that challenges people to capture untold stories from people around the world through their own black-and-white photos. They then upload their images to the organization’s website, and these images are made into posters and sent back to their creators to be displayed in their own communities. Not unlike wild posting, the image creators place their resulting posters anywhere – from an office window to a wall of portraits on an abandoned building or a packed-house stadium. The exhibitions are documented, archived, and viewable virtually on social-media sites like Youtube, as well as the Inside Out website (insideoutproject.net).

In 2011, JR and the Inside Out team decided to expand upon this idea, taking the project to this year’s Rencontres d'Arles, a summer photography festival in Arles, France. JR designed a photo booth that was located in the Great Hall of Les Ateliers for the duration of the festival, encouraging the attendees to have their photo taken – when all was said and done, photographs of 6000 people were generated.

The Inside Out crew then used an HP Designjet Z6200 photo printer, located on a bridge 40 feet above the festival floor, to output the photos onto HP Bond paper. As the 35 x 54-inch prints were cut, they fluttered to the floor and into the hands of the waiting audience members, who were then encouraged to paste their images on the streets or in public places symbolic for them. In a short period of time, the streets of Paris became “the largest art gallery in the world,” says JR.