Two Frenchmen Photographing for Peace

March 8, 2006 — -- The posters command attention -- a series of photographs in black and white, blown up to enormous proportions, of Israelis and Palestinians.

Side by side, it is impossible to tell who is who, and that is exactly the point. Since Monday, the images, some as tall as 23 feet, have appeared in startlingly visible locations throughout Israel and the Palestinian territories.

This is the Face2Face project, created by JR and Marco, the two Frenchmen who this week pasted the photographs on buildings and billboards across Ramallah, Hebron, Jericho, Bethlehem, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

They also managed to plaster their posters onto both sides of the security wall that divides the West Bank. So far, to their surprise, no one has stopped them.

JR, who goes by his initials to maintain anonymity, describes himself as an underground photographer, "around 25 years old." Energetic and ebullient, he is the artistic force behind Face2Face.

The posters are made from photo portraits he took of ordinary Palestinians and Israelis in December 2006. JR acknowledges that what he and Marco are doing is "probably illegal," since they did not seek any government authorization out of fear that an official stamp of approval would alter the way in which people responded to the work.

Marco, 45, is on sabbatical from his career in information technology. He is in charge of the organizational side of Face2Face. This particular campaign was his idea.

Marco had been following JR's work in France, which included an unauthorized poster campaign on the streets of Paris in 2004.

JR displayed the images of young people in the housing estates near Clichy-sous-Bois, just north of the city, the starting point of the suburban riots that broke out that year in France. JR wanted Parisians to see how their views of people on the outskirts of the city had become stereotyped.

"In the end, the people in Paris started laughing when they saw these faces. It was no more 'the crazy monster from the ghetto,'" JR said.