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.

Madonna's buildOn Alliance Bears Fruit In Malawi

Madonna’s buildOn Alliance Bears Fruit In Malawi

“Because of Madonna and Raising Malawi’s support, we will be able to build schools for children that the rest of the world has left behind.  Generations of children will have access to education and be empowered to break the cycle of poverty, illiteracy and low expectations,” said Jim Ziolkowski, Founder and CEO of buildOn, in his own comments around the collaboration.

Street Artist JR Brings Egalitarian Vision To New York City Ballet & NYCB Art Series 2014

Street Artist JR Brings Egalitarian Vision To New York City Ballet & NYCB Art Series 2014

At AOC, we’ve tracked street artist JR from Kibera to a Brazilian favela and into Paris. We celebrated JR’s winning the annual $100,000 TED prize and his ‘Women Are Heroes’ project. With his brilliant perspective on the beauty of the ordinary, JR has been camped out in New York’s Lincoln Center as part of the New York City Ballet’s 2014 Art Series.

More JR at AOC

Photographers JR & Jonas Bendiksen | Artistry in Kibera, Kenya

JR ‘s “Women Are Heroes” Kibera, Kenya

NOWNESS, Louis Vuitton’s culture website Tweeted JR’s “Women Are Heroes” project just now, featuring photos from Kibera, located in Nairobi, Kenya.

We’ve written extensively about this inspiring, global project and only recently connected it to Jonas Bendiksen’s widely-read stories at Anne of Carversville: ‘The Places We Live”: Four Monumental Slums Typify ‘Home’ for More than One Billion People.

Bendiksen photographs Kibera from another angle than JR.

We found ourselves in Kibera for another reason, wanting to learn more about the so-called “flying toilets” of Kibera. If you require translation, a “flying toilet” consists of human waste put into a plastic bag and tossed into the air, landing on roads or in gutters.

The photographs of both JR and Jonas Bendiksen bring the “flying toilets” of Kibera into sharp focus.

In Paris All Eyes are on "Women are Heroes"

In Paris All Eyes are on “Women are Heroes”

We have two “Women are Heroes” videos, one is a 90-minute documentary with the women’s voices and stories and another six-minute short of JR’s team at work, mounting the pictures in a city and the photographer explaining the concepts behind the project.