JR Launches Walking New York With Massive Street Art Cover For New York Times Magazine

The New York Times Magazine shares their latest cover featuring a gigantic piece of street art by France’s JR. Photographed from a helicopter, the man walking is a massive wheatpasting located in the Flatiron Plaza next to Madison Square Park. JR’s street art launches a new initiative Walking New York where on a special interactive site, users can position a pin or enter an address to show the specific location of their favorite walk. In 500 characters, they can then share why that walk is meaningful to them. Select submissions will be published online throughout the coming weeks.

The young man on the cover is Elmar Aliyev, a 20-year-old waiter at Old Baku, an Azerbaijani restaurant in Brooklyn. Elmar immigrated to America last August after winning the green-card lottery. JR’s image was short-lived. Aliyev’s picture was pasted in Flatiron Plaza on April 11 over a period of 3 hours. JR went up in a helicopter to photograph the 150-foot image, a stunning testament to New York’s 3.1 million immigrants that was power-washed away by 9:30 pm. Read on.