By Alasdair Sandford
BBC News, Paris
Tourists taking a trip by “Bateau Mouche” down the River Seine are being spied upon.
As they approach the Ile Saint-Louis, giant pairs of women’s eyes stare back at them from the bridge and riverbanks.
The huge black and white photographs are not advertising make-up or perfume.
They form perhaps the largest - and certainly the most visible - art exhibition that Paris has seen in decades.
“Eyes for me are the windows of the soul,” says the young artist whose work it is. “Through the eyes, you can read the person, sometimes read their story.”
He is known only as “JR”, but the Parisian “photograffeur” has become known around the world.
His projects have taken him to the troubled Paris suburbs, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to Brazil, Kenya, Liberia, India and Cambodia - each time putting up his giant prints in the midst of local communities.
‘Energy and strength’
“Women are Heroes”, which runs until 2 November, pays tribute to the courage and resilience of women in places where JR says “art does not exist”.
While men controlled the streets everywhere, in the background those trying to hold up or rebuild their communities were the women.
“Art brings something you can’t quantify, that revalorises people”
JR
Photograffeur
“The eyes are powerful because the women are powerful,” he says. “You can see the energy and strength in those eyes.”
One of the pairs of eyes adorning the Ile Saint-Louis belongs to Rosiete, a woman in her forties who lives in Providencia, a favela or shanty town, in Rio de Janeiro.
She struggles to carve out as normal a life as possible, while around her gangs fight their daily battles, and the police are prone to act as much as protagonists as protectors.
“Right in front of her door you have kids with big weapons, waiting and selling drugs all day, and she is there cooking,” says JR.
“Those kids in the street don’t know what is art, what is culture in the way we understand it.”
‘Gradual improvement’
Rosiete provided the link between the community and his team as they filmed and posted their giant photos.
She might have been forgiven for feeling out of place at the champagne reception in Paris to mark the exhibition’s launch.
The trip is her first outside Rio. But not only did she prepare Brazilian dishes for the guests, she also gave a speech and later sang to them.
Her favela, she said, had been neglected by successive governments. But gradually improvements were taking place.
Something about JR’s energy and enthusiasm endears him to people in world trouble spots, and encourages a team of 100 volunteers to spend the best part of a fortnight posting up “Women are Heroes” in Paris.
He has met almost all of the exhibition’s costs himself.
JR intends to return to Rio and check on the progress of the cultural centre his team has opened in Providencia.
When he mounted his photos there last year, he says, the drug dealers downed their weapons for the day.
“You can’t say that art has changed the lives of that community or those people forever, but it did change something in their hearts,” says JR.
He thinks art has the power to make ordinary people feel valued again.
“Art brings something you can’t quantify, that revalorises people. That’s happened in many places that we’ve been, and it leaves something that will grow year after year.”