On the cover of this month’s New York Times Magazine is a special project prepared by JR (interviewed) for their Walking New York issue. Focused on the issue of immigration as of late, the famous street artist decided to photograph recent immigrants walking down the streets of Nolita and in turn pasting their images on city streets, where they are often invisible despite there being approximately 3.1 million of them in NYC. The final chosen subject for the cover was Elmar Aliyev, a 20-year-old waiter at Old Baku, an Azerbaijani restaurant on Ditmas Avenue in Brooklyn. His 150-foot-tall form was pasted in the heart of Manhattan, on Flatiron plaza, the triangle of pavement between Fifth Avenue, Broadway and East 23rd Street. The French artist then took to the skies to photograph the final image where pedestrians walked right over him without even noticing. See a timelapse, photos, and more background info here.
Discuss JR here.
