In Wrinkles of the City: Shanghai, the elderly share their story of how they have watched their city suffer and become scarred through cultural, political and economic change. Now the withered faces of his subjects scar the walls of the city as JR stunningly fuses portraiture with public art. These people represent the memory of their city and act as the missing link between older and newer generations.
One such citizen, Li Lei, writes a message to JR at the start of the book, “JR, When you paste monumental photographs in the streets, you paste in a community, and the meaning of these images is not your personal thing, because their significance goes beyond what meets the eye. The observer meets reality and is forced to reflect.”
JR - Wrinkles of the city Shanghai from Kittesencula on Vimeo.