now it’s also a book
(foto: http://face2faceproject.com/)
In this March I read a reportage from the Peacereporter which attracted me a lot. It was about a project called “Face2Face” by two French artist-activists, which they posted 20 sets of huge portraits of people on the walls in around the cities of Israel and Palestinian.
In 2005, two Frence art-activists as they called themselves, JR and Marco, went to Middle-East to figure out why the Palestinians and the Israelis can’t get alone with each other. As they told in their project website, they traveled across the Israeli and Palestinian cities without speaking too much. They went with their camera to look to the world in this certain area with amazement.
They talked to people about their project of taking their pictures and enlarging them and putting them on the walls in all around the cities. People agreed. You can see from the film that from kids to rabbi, from barber to prest, they stood infront of the camera making faces with amusement. People seems enjoying it a lot. And when the huge portraits finally posted in this early March in town, there’re Israelis said that the wall itself is already ugly enough, the portraits makes it worst. Some on the Palestinians side share the same thought–”No! I don’t want to see the Israelis’ faces. It seems that they are laughting at us”, although most people appreciated it as told from the reportage from the Peacereporter.
JR and Marco found that although the area is not big, it has many things to see: it has three religions, it has mountains, sea, desert and lakes. It also is a tiny area where love and hate, hope and despair are embeded together. They also found that “these people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families”, yet they keep fighting to each other for 60 years.
They are neighbors but only see each other from the media. The authors wanted to make them see that fact that they are so close to each other. “We hope that this project will contribute to a better understanding between Israelis and Palestinians”as they said in the concept of the project. So the “Face2Face” is necessary. They promise to be back in the area with “Hand in Hand” in a few years.
For details of the FACE2FACE project : JR&Marco http://face2faceproject.com/
Faccia a Faccia col Nemico(in Italian from Peacereporter)http://www.peacereporter.net/dettaglio_articolo.php?idc=0&idart=7592
Other JR’s projects
28 millimètres – Portrait d’une génération http://www.28millimetres.com/
JR “Is Watching you” http://outsides.de/artist/Jr.html
Filed under: books
