New York (AFP)

His anonymous pictures from around the world have made him famous: the Brooklyn Museum dedicates from Friday to JR a retrospective illuminating 20 years of work of the French artist, now living in New York.

"It's quite special to see all of his work when you're just 36 years old," says JR to AFP, a few hours before the opening of the exhibition, "but at the same time, realize that it's been 20 years already. "

Everything is not there, far from it. Most of the work of the co-director of the film "Faces, Villages" with Agnès Varda is also in the street, where it has often disappeared.

But through a selection of his works, spread over two decades, "JR: Chronicles", visible until May 3, offers perspective on an artist who fits in the ephemeral, in the moment.

King of the happening, the buzz, perfectly in his time, that of the generation Instagram, JR is not only that.

"We wanted to present JR as a societal artist, which may not be the way many people see it, in the United States anyway," says Drew Sawyer, co-curator of the exhibition, with Sharon Matt Atkins.

From the first photos, stuck on the walls of Paris, to his last work, a giant fresco that represents more than 1,000 New Yorkers, "all projects are linked to each other," says the thirty-year-old with his hat and dark glasses.

The guiding thread, "What I have most dear in my work on the street", he says, is "to make people meet".

From the beginning, when he was going to photograph the young people of Clichy-sous-Bois, JR goes into contact, to then fade behind his subjects.

With "Women are Heroes", "The Wrinkles of the City" or "Inside Out", or "Faces, Villages", it offers a representation to the invisible.

- "Keep track" -

"From the beginning, working in the ephemeral, outside, I always took into account the documentation to keep track," says JR.

"And these tracks," he says, "gradually, have become, at times, more interesting than the outer projects themselves since they show how people have reacted to the installations."

"It gives a temperature of the place, almost a sociological study of the different contexts in which I was able to install these works."

The exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, which has similarities to the European Photography House, closed in February, is a counterpoint to the general public's knowledge of JR's work.

Videos, montages, animations ... the French even pushes the work of pedagogy to propose, via an application on smartphone, a series of videos in which he explains his projects.

"What we see in the museum, we can not see in the work that I could achieve," argues the one who recently flabbergasted the United States with his giant picture of a child looking over the wall of the Mexican border.

This exhibition, JR wanted it free, while refusing that it is sponsored by one or more companies, dominant practice today. The budget was closed with contributions from individual donors.

"I have been living in New York for nine years and being able to present my work for the first time like this is an incredible opportunity."

At the center of the exhibition, there is "Chronicles of New York," the giant fresco with these hundreds of New Yorkers he photographed and interviewed separately.

They are gathered in a giant montage, which recalls, as "Chronicles of Clichy-Montfermeil" (2017), paintings by Veronese or Le Tintoret, as well as the Mexican painter Diego Rivera, claimed influence. The photo will soon be posted everywhere in the American megacity.

From Rio to the Louvre, JR thinks big, which requires preparation. It is a long time, the time of the graffiti to the tears, but "the way I work has not really changed," he says.

He has already started on other projects, including one in an American prison, which materialized only a few days ago.

"This facility, thanks to the printing, my way of working and also my speed, staying in small teams," he explains, "allows me to continue working as when I was 16 years old. decide to go and stick in one street or another. "

© 2019 AFP