Gotta love this artist...

The NY Times ran an article and photo spread on the recent TED prize winner for 2011 - the artist J R - whom they describe as "a Parisian provocateur with a global orientation. Check this out... in-freakin-credible!

What a BRILLIANT conceptual artist who takes real life and explores both the promise and the problems of certain contexts by sharing them in larger than life ways. He is embracing but also challenging the ordinary by exposing the extraordinary so that we might see what is almost always right before our eyes but we're too busy - or afraid - or even biased to notice.

The Guardian (UK) writes: As a teenager, he started out as a graffiti artist but began taking photographs when he found a camera on the Paris Métro. Now aged 26, he mixes the two forms and styles himself a "photograffeur", pasting oversize black-and-white photographic canvases in surprising public locations. It is something of a point of honour never to ask permission from the authorities.

"The fact that I stay anonymous means I can exhibit wherever I want," he explains with a broad grin, a plate of microwaved lamb tagine balanced precariously on his knees. "No one knows my name, so it's easy for me to travel."

In the aftermath of the 2004 riots in the Parisian suburbs, JR chose to exhibit in the grand central districts of his home town, pasting up photographs on the walls of the Marais. Portrait of a Generation featured close-up pictures of the young residents of the banlieues pulling funny faces through a fish-eye lens. Instead of the immigrant thugs of popular imagination, the Parisians who walked past JR's photographs were confronted with a more human image. "Most of the media shots of the rioters were taken with a long lens," explains JR, who comes from a mixed-race background with Tunisian and Eastern European heritage. "I used a 28mm lens to capture them really close up." (read more @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/mar/07/street-art-jr-photography)

Dude... this guy is the real deal.