Best known for pasting photocopies of his work onto the streets, JR's roots as a photographer trace back to a camera that he found in the Paris metro, with which he began documenting his own graffiti work. He later began staging portraits of his close friends and peers, which he would paste onto building interiors and exteriors. One of his earliest photo series, Portraits of a Generation, documented the residents of the neighborhood Cité des Bosquets during the 2005 French riots. In a deliberate act of social and political critique, JR then pasted the photographs in wealthier east Paris neighborhoods. His work has been shown in institutions such the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Lincoln Center in New York, as part of a collaboration with the New York City Ballet. He is the winner of a TED Prize in 2011, and the director of a short film Ellis, starring Robert De Niro, in 2015.