Close up. I’m not really this calm.
I got a surprising note from my friend, the artist Tito Vandermeyden, telling me that he spotted me in a work on the walls of SFMOMA.
I was one of the people photographed by French artist JR for his Chronicles of San Francisco project last year (I wrote about it at the time). Hanging with him and his friendly crew was a fun time. But I’d seen only one image that resulted from the shoots and didn’t find myself in it, so figured I hadn’t made the cut. Turns out my image is used in this huge, moving mural (as video!) and also on the title page of the book—such an honor!
I understand there’s an audio component where you can hear the people in the mural discussing their lives here in San Francisco.
Looks like you could own a print of the work. Starting bid is $10k 😉
The section of the mural that my image is in.
This seems to be an alternate version of the mural I’m in — I’m in a different pose. Can you spot me?
Mural at SF MOMA
JR’s SF works at Pace Gallery
If you’re unfamiliar with JR, you might check the wiki page on him or read this from SFMOMA:
Celebrate the voices of our extraordinary, unique, and diverse city in The Chronicles of San Francisco, by internationally recognized artist JR. Over the course of two months in early 2018, the artist set up a mobile studio in twenty-two locations around San Francisco, where he filmed and interviewed nearly twelve hundred people from across the city’s multifaceted communities. In the completed work, a digital mural scrolls across a seamless bank of screens, bringing together the faces and untold stories of the people we encounter every day. Presented in SFMOMA’s soaring Roberts Family Gallery, this work is free and accessible to the public.
Born in France in 1983, JR began tagging buildings as a young teenager. Soon he shifted from graffiti to photo-based work, creating images of faces, printing them on large sheets of inexpensive paper, and pasting them on buildings. Although he has completed many such projects around the world, this is his first major installation in San Francisco, and uniquely draws inspiration from Diego Rivera’s murals found throughout the city.