Women Are Heroes

"Women Are Heroes" is a photography project celebrating women who must struggle with the hardships in often terrible circumstance. The artist behind the work is JR and the results are wonderful.

JR travels to the women and gets them to tell their sometimes brutal stories - then, they turn around this moment of profound sadness and make a funny face for the camera. The photos are then enlarged to huge sizes and posted within the women's own communities.

The project has taken place in Sierra Leone, Kenya, Sudan, Liberia, and Brazil and is headed to Cambodia, India, Laos, and Morocco. Afterwards the photos will be displayed in Western cities, which has already happened in Brussels.

'Morro da Providencia' favela in Rio de Janiero, Brazil:



Brussels, Belgium:


There's a video on the official site where you can see more about the process.

You can read more about the "WaR" series here or see another gallery of the Brazil photos here.

Thanks to the awesome Wooster Collective for the tip, a site that celebrates ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world.