Toward the end of 2018, a powerful new piece by JR appeared at the Bowery Mural Wall. It was titled “The Gun Chronicles: A Story of America” and was a collaboration between JR and Time Magazine. It is comprised of 245 separately photographs that JR stitched together during conversations with individuals from Dallas, St. Louis and Washing, D.C. These photographs featured Americans from all sides of the gun debate from anti-gun activists to hunters and are meant to lend a spotlight on the human voices of this divisive topic. All 245 people are seated at the table where they seem to be engaged in some sort of thoughtful discourse or at least be open to one thing that we seem to have really lacked lately: listen to one another.
A note on the red marks: these are not part of JR’s original work. Soon after the installation of the mural, 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh were massacred. A couple days after that, JR’s piece was tagged with the number 11, in red, perhaps to represent those who’d lost their lives.