JR at the MEP, Paris

JR Momentum, the mechanics of the race, curated by Jean-Luc Monterosso, is possibly Monterosso's last show at the European House of Photography before new director Simon Baker shares his vision at the MEP. This show is the first major exhibition of JR's work within a French institution. It brings together the artist's first photographs, monumental format collages of his biggest projects, and several new installations.

The exhibit showcases many projects, inviting visitors to lose themselves into JR's creative process, by retracing his first shots when he followed a group of graffiti artists in Paris in the early 2000s, as well as his first pastings. The show also goes back on his major series: Portrait of a Generation (an illegal pasting exhibition of portraits taken with a 28 mm lens); Women Are Heroes (that pays tribute to those who play an essential role in society but who are the primary victims of wars and conflicts); The Wrinkles of the City (a world scale project presented in various cities around the world where 'wrinkles', human as well as architectural, can be found) ; Unframed (in which JR reinterprets works by other photographers, giving them a new meaning by taking them out of their original context). The exhibit unveils for the first time in Europe an interactive mural about guns in America. In all, JR filmed and photographed 245 people - hunters and activists, teachers and police officers, parents and children - to create this mural for TIME's November 5, 2018, cover. Visitors are able to discover the mural in a unique way thanks to an online platform especially developed for the event.

The exhibition is showing currently and finishes February 10.

JR and Agnes Varda at The Lincoln Center

As noteworthy is the 2017 film where 89 year old Agnes Varda collaborated with 34 year old JR on a remarkable new documentary titled Faces Places. In the film they journey from one rural French village to another, meeting people, taking photographs, and printing the images super large-scale to be placed grandly within the environments they encountered. Following a screening of Faces Places at the 55th New York Film Festival, the two artist friends discussed their unique project and the wise and wonderful film that came out of it. You can see The Lincoln Center conversation HERE.

You can go to JR's website HERE and the MEP HERE.