JR JR

French artist JR transforms public spaces around the world with powerful large-scale portraits of residents. His work spans continents and communities—from striking images of women’s eyes pasted across buildings in the favelas of Brazil or the shanty towns of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and India. To portraits of Palestinian and Israeli workers placed face to face on either side of the West Bank wall, challenging viewers to see shared humanity beyond political divides.
In Japan, following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, JR set up a mobile photo studio to capture A0-sized portraits of people living in affected areas, later displaying them in public spaces throughout the Tohoku region.

In his works, people are not spectators but active creators who shape the artworks and the landscape of their city. His public, almost monumental projects provoke questions and challenge passers-by to confront their own perceptions.
KYOTOGRAPHIE 2025 presents JR, Chronicle Kyoto 2024. Inspired by the Mexican mural artist Diego Rivera (1886-1957), in 2017 Chronicle project started, an immersive and impressive series of large-scale participatory murals. Each work entailed photographing and filming hundreds of people, alone or in groups, and then collaging their portraits together to create a narrative and highly realistic composition that dealt with a place or social issue. The project has previously been realised in the cities of Miami, New York, San Francisco and Paris.

In the autumn of 2024, JR and his team with the support of KYOTOGRAPHIE set up mobile studios at eight locations in Kyoto, including Kyoto Station, the plaza in front of Kyoto City Hall, on the Kamogawa Delta, and in the countryside of Ohara to create the Kyoto project. They captured the spirit of Kyoto through portraits of 505 people from all walks of life including geiko, tea masters, Buddhist monks, artisans, drag queens, and locals, each adding their presence to the city’s vibrant story. Simultaneously, they recorded each person’s story. These images were then woven into a dynamic collage that blends Kyoto’s rich urban tapestry, from historic machiya townhouses to contemporary architecture. The result is a monumental mural, 22.55 by 5 meters, set to transform the wall of the Kyoto Station Building into a celebration of the city's diversity and creativity.

In addition to JR, Chronicles Kyoto 2024, Chronicles works created by JR in other cities are exhibited in The Kyoto Shimbun Bldg. B1F (Former Printing Plant) & 1F. Portraits of 505 people photographed in Kyoto are cut out and displayed against a background of actual pages of the Kyoto Shimbun newspaper from the date they were photographed. Helped along by features unique to a former newspaper printing plant, viewers are drawn into the world of Chronicles.