Eyes from the slums watch culture-drunk Parisians

by Alison Hird

Article published on the 2009-10-23 Latest update 2009-10-26 09:40 TU

Women are Heroes on the banks of the Seine
(Photo: JR)

Ile St Louis - one of Paris’s oldest and most exclusive districts with its cobbled streets and tea-shops - is the object of many an envious gaze. Now it’s staring back at us, its walls wrapped in huge posters of women’s eyes from around the world.

The eyes are the latest installation from French artist, photographer and utopian JR - Women are Heroes.

The street is his gallery. Since he first found a camera on the metro nine years ago and started shooting pictures of graffiti artists, JR has stayed true to his belief that art has to be where you least expect it - on walls, roofs, even trains.

Kibera in Nairobi where JR covered a whole train in photos of its residents - Judith’s eyes are just behind the engine
(Photo: JR)

For the Women are Heroes exhibition JR and his team of volunteers have pasted up some eight kilometres of posters of women’s eyes around Ile St Louis and the Louis Philippe bridge that links the island to Paris’s right bank.

It’s his biggest-ever exhibition, bringing together work from his ongoing project, Women. It has taken him to some of the world’s poorest and most troubled places, such as Africa’s biggest slum in Nairobi, the favelas in Rio or desolate quarters of Phnom Penh.

The favela in Rio
(Photo: JR)

“I wanted to go and travel in places where art doesn’t exist […] and have my own eyes on those locations,” JR tells me as we stand on the windy Louis Philippe bridge.

Using a 28mm wide-angle lens, JR has zoomed in on the faces of some 70 women. The images' force seems amplified when we focus just on the eyes.

“Women are the strength behind all those communities,” he explains. But, he adds, they’re rarely recognised.

JR wanted to give women their rightful place. And it’s a big place indeed. The poster of Rosetta’s eyes is 40 metres wide.

“She gave us her eyes on the community,” he goes on. Rosetta helped him get accepted in the poor neighbourhoods of Rio, the favelas, so that he could photograph its locals and then paste up the results on the shacks there.

“She wanted us to bring some culture into the favela, give the kids something other than drug-trafficking”

Israelis and Palestinians doing the same jobs rub shoulders on both sides of Israel ’s wall in the West Bank
(Photo: JR)

As Rosetta stares out from those old Paris walls she’s bringing some of the favela to Paris. You end up wondering who’s doing the looking.

Then there’s Judith whose round, piercing eyes cover the bridge. She originally featured on the train that runs through the Kibera slum in Nairobi and where post-election rioting first erupted in 2008. JR covered it entirely in photos as part of the Women project in Kenya. 

In the book that accompanies the exhibition Judith explains she wanted her photo to be on the train so that “everyone in the world or even in this village asks who I am. I have to pass this message on to women who spend their time waiting for their husbands.”

JR insists the women’s stories are more important than the photos themselves and their insistent, inquisitive or mocking expressions leave you wanting more. But for a 24h/24h street exhibition subject to wind, rain and vandalism there’s no accompanying text.

Instead, each photo has a mobile phone number that takes you to an audio-guide where you can hear about the grandmother whose grandson was sold and killed, the widow raped by the police, the woman excluded from society because she divorced her husband… and many more strong, personal stories.

The artist
(Copyright: JR)

JR fiercely defends his artistic independence and travels without authorisation, sponsor or security.

“I’ve been arrested, deported and that’s why I stay anonymous behind my initials. For me the action needs to be illegal”.

But he admits this carries obvious risks. 

“When you paste in the favelas where kids with AK47s decide what’s gonna happen, it’s another state of law.”

His only weapons have been humour, determination and a good dose of naivety.

“We have always this kind of naive way of coming, we just want to try. We’ll ask people in the street but not ask for authorisation.”

In 2007 he produced a tongue-in-cheek series called “Face2Face” where portraits of Israelis and Palestinians doing the same jobs were pasted up on both sides of Israel’s “security barrier” or wall of separation in the West Bank.

He’s also snapped rabbis, Catholic nuns and Palestinians grimacing and giggling. The portraits were pasted in towns in the West Bank and Israel.

 “On the first day in Hebron we got thrown out, but as we were given 15 days to actually leave the territory, we pasted like mad,” he jokes with a cheeriness that’s clearly got him out of a hot moment or two.

At the end of the day, the artist says he finds working in places where there’s little or no such art much more interesting and rewarding.

“Over here, to create reaction you have to make it so big that the people have to stop, think and find out what’s going on their wall. But in a place like the Middle East or in the favelas, even if you put a small four-by-three-inch poster people stop and ask you what it is and what it’s for.”

The Women are Heroes exhibition hopes to bridge that divide, getting culture-drunk Parisians curious about how people live “over there”.

Women are Heroes on and around Ile St Louis, and at the Pavillion de l’arsenal, 21 bd Morland Paris 75004 runs until November 2.

The book Women are Heroes is published by Alternatives at 45 euros.

A documentary film about the Women project is due out in spring 2010.