Face 2 Face

In 2007, during the Face 2 Face project, JR and Marco organize the largest illegal photography exhibition ever. For this project, portraits of Israelis and Palestinians are pasted face to face, in monumental formats on both sides of the wall and in several Palestinian and Israeli cities.

The Face 2 Face project

When we met in 2005, we decided to go together to the Middle‐East to figure out why Palestinians and Israelis couldn't find a way to get along together. We then travelled through the Israeli and Palestinian cities without speaking much. Just looking to this world with amazement. This holy place for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This tiny area where you can see mountains, sea, deserts and lakes, love and hate, hope and despair embedded together.

After a week, we had the exact same conclusion: these people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families. A religious covered woman has her twin sister on the other side. A farmer, a taxi driver, a teacher, has his twin brother in front of him. And he is endlessly fighting with him.

It's obvious, but they don't see that. We must put them face to face. They will realize.

The Face2Face project consists of taking portraits of Palestinians and Israelis doing the same job and posting them face to face, in huge formats, in unavoidable places, on both Israeli and Palestinian sides. We want, at last, everyone to laugh and to think by seeing the portrait of the other and his own portrait.

In a very sensitive context, we have to be clear. We are in favour of a solution in which two countries, Israel and Palestine would live peacefully within safe and internationally recognized borders. All the bilateral peace projects (Clinton/Taba, Ayalon/Nusseibeh, Geneva Agreements) are converging into the same direction. We can be optimistic.