JR, Photographic Street Artist, Awarded $100,000 Philanthropic Prize

Kids, don't let your mom tell you graffiti doesn't pay.


[United Kingdom, 2008 (or earlier)]

When we caught this today in The New York Times, we felt like we won the $100K. Whenever something like this happens, all of Hip Hop wins. Congratulations, JR. Next time you're in New York City, you got a place to stay.


[Israel, Face to face, 2007]

In the Times article, author Randy Kennedy writes:

[T]he TED conference, the California lecture series named for its roots in technology, entertainment and design, said on Tuesday that it planned to give its annual $100,000 prize for 2011 — awarded in the past to figures like Bill Clinton, Bono and the biologist E. O. Wilson — to the Parisian street artist known as J R, a shadowy figure who has made a name for himself by plastering colossal photographs in downtrodden neighborhoods around the world. The images usually extol local residents, to whom he has become a Robin Hood-like hero.

[Paris, still there as of August 2010]

And this is what JR's Agency VU writes about his winning the award:

JR, a moving and innovative artist who exhibits freely in the world's streets, has been named the recipient of the 2011 TED Prize – an award granting $100,000 and something much bigger: a wish to change the world with the support of the TED Community's incredible resources.

JR represents a new chapter in the TED Prize. While a seemingly unconventional recipient, his work matches the creativity and innovative spirit of the TED community and his art inspires people to view the world differently – and want to change it for the better.

JR is a true humanitarian who creates "Pervasive Art." Working with a team of volunteers in various urban environments, he mounts enormous black-and-white photo canvases that spread on the buildings of the slums around Paris, on the walls in the Middle East, on the broken bridges in Africa, and in the favelas of Brazil. These images become part of the local landscape and capture people's attention and imagination around the world.

In Rio, he turned hillsides into dramatic visual landscape by applying images to the facades of favela homes. In Kenya, focusing on "Women Are Heroes," he turned Kibera into a stunning gallery of local faces. And in Israel and Palestine, he mounted photos of a rabbi, imam and priest on walls across the region – including the wall separating Israel from the West Bank.

JR remains anonymous – never showing his full face, revealing his name, or explaining his huge portraits – to allow for an encounter between the subject and passers-by.

"JR's mind blowing creations have inspired people to see art where they wouldn't expect it and create it when they didn't know they could," said TED Prize Director Amy Novogratz. "He's putting a human face on some of the most critical social issues while redefining how we view, make and display art. JR has moved all of us at the TED Prize. There is no doubt that his talent – paired with the resources of this amazing community – will lead to a wish that changes the world."

Bus 174... Window into another world

Bus 174 (Ônibus 174): 7 out of 10: Sandro is the name of our protagonist in Bus 174. The film is the latest in a long line of documentaries dealing with the street children of Brazil. This documentary is simply the cream of the crop. Using actual footage of a hostage crisis where Sandro takes a municipal bus hostage the film creates great tension for the viewer. (Especially American viewers like me who have no idea how this turns out.)

Interspersed between scenes of the hostage crisis are talking head interviews (a mixed bag from fascinating like Sandro's Aunt to annoying such as Sandro's social worker). Most fascinating is the sheer volume of footage from Sandro's street life before the crisis. The Documentary filmmakers really went out of their way to dig up these treasures.

The documentary is not without flaws however. The sheer volume of people who helped Sandro out in his young life undercuts the whole street kid premise of the film. The middle third does drag as many have noted and there is a horribly misjudged scene in a jail where prisoners shout out their grievances. (Shot in the negative like the monster vision from a mid-nineties creature feature it is a clear fabrication as the filmmakers were denied access to the actual jail in question. It is unnecessary and kills the mood like that Trey Parker style cartoon in Bowling for Columbine).

Those overall minor flaws aside this is one fascinating documentary that truly takes you into another world. Despite cursing and brief male nudity I would recommend this to every high school history class to see how the third world really lives.





Some nice unrelated photos and art from my best of Google collection.



"Bus 174 Bus Stop Art Frahm"


"Bus 174 Fare Loser Art Frahm"


"Bus 174 London Calling Topless"


"Bus 174 Pancaldo"


"Bus 174 WTCG"






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1984 (Nineteen Eighty Four)...In Russia TV watches you.

1984 (Nineteen Eighty Four): 8 out of 10: Most films simply don't age all that well. Philadelphia with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington for example simply do not have the same impact today that it did in 1993. (Both gay people in general and AIDS in particular are simply less scary today.) In another example we have seen both technology and fashion move so fast that the futuristic phones in many a seventies sci-fi movie look positively ancient today not to mention the burnt orange and avocado green color scheme of the future that so many seventies sci-fi are stuck with. (I'm looking your way Rollerball.)

So how has a film, released when people outside of American colleges actually believed communism worked, aged today?

Brilliantly. If I say so myself. If anything the film works better today than it did in 1985.

For starters the film itself is timeless. Nothing about the film gives away the date that it was made. Only the fact I know who John Hurt and Richard Burton are gives a hint to time period. The film itself could have been released in theaters last week.

Since the film comments heavily on torture in its last act and on “Big Brotherism” throughout, if released today it undoubtly would be seen as a direct attack on both the Bush administration and the British Labor government. In fact many scenes are a clear attack on the Bush administrations torture policy and the endless war on “Terrorism”. One could almost never believe the film was about Communism at all. Modern audiences today would laugh at such a quaint notion.

With few exceptions I have never known a film so timeless. Heck it is one better than simple timelessness. It is actually more relevant today than when it was made. The idea of government using an endless indefinable and unwinnable war to curtail its subject's freedoms is right from today's headlines; whether you are discussing the war on drugs, terrorism, or global warming the results are the same. All the good intentions in the world simply mean less freedom for you and your children. “For the greater good” no less.


Orwell would be shocked at the creativity governments today would use to curtail peoples freedoms and lives. Or perhaps he wouldn't and that is why his story is so timeless and most remarkably the film based on it is as well.


Oh and the film is fun with a brilliant and perfectly cast John Hurt in the primary role as the put upon and tortured everyman. Richard Burton, not chewing scenery for once, in a role with gravitas; his last I believe. Also super cute and believable Suzanna Hamilton who looks like a real woman both in and out of her clothes as the love interest and the catalyst for desire of change. And a special kudos to a fantastic direction by Michael Radford and production design by Allan Cameron. The really capture a place and time that as I have said before is timeless.

In conjunction with Terry Gilliam’s similarly themed Brazil, Nineteen Eighty Four is one of the best movies about the early 21st century made during the Nineteen Eighties.

Title Screen from Michael Radford classic.

John Hurt as the everyman.

If you look closely I believe the picture tube behind hurt is advertising BlogSpot.

Richard Burton was excellent in what was his last big screen appearance before dieing from a cerebral hemorrhage in ... wait for it... 1984. Oh spooky. It would be as if a giant computer crushed John Cusack in 2012.

Suzanna Hamilton on her way to Grandmas in a very X-rated version of Little Red Riding Hood.

This scene always reminded me more of an Amway meeting than a government meeting.

Movie Poster from I'm guessing Spain

An Apple a day certainly keeps one thin as does living in a dystopian totalitarian future. Of course it is the little things such as not have a good razor that make that gray (and bushy) future so daunting.



Movie Trailer








"The breasts are alive and they are coming towards us"



"I swear I had the exact same apartment on the forth floor at 71st and 1st in Manhattan in the early nineties."






I am officially shallow. I watch this serious scene from 1984 with Suzanna Hamilton and John Hurt and all I can think is to question why she didn't shave her armpits? Was it realism for the film (razors are very hard to come by) or was it a personal choice by the actress.






The idea of a morality police has always scared me. I often fear that segments of the American populace are a little to interested in what their neighbors do behind close doors.


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