Inside Out

Pablo Picasso loved playing around in front of the camera.

“Fish-eye Picasso. 1963.

Photographer David Douglas Duncan talks about this photo: The Nikon camera company’s engineers sent me a prototype of a new lens to test. I did, at the beach in Cannes, using as my subject the greatest portrait distorter of all time.”

Reminds me of artist JR's TED Prize wish "to use art to turn the world Inside Out."
http://www.tedprize.org/jr-2011-ted-prize-winner/

Since the 2011 TED Prize winner JR announced his wish last March, thousands of people have participated in what the artist hopes will be the world's largest participatory art project. The first video episode documenting the project is from Inside Out Tunisia. JR works with the project leaders to paste up photos of 100 ordinary Tunisians in the spot where President Ben Ali was once the face of the city.

The video shows JR delivering the first set of prints of the Inside Out project to the Tunisian team, and they ask him if he is happy about their work. JR responds:

"It's great! You've really understood it. It's a mix of professional and amateur work, but that was what I was looking for. What I was hoping for. I wanted them to be your pictures.

We only have one rule for the project.
The pictures must be portraits... And they must express something.
In all of yours, we can feel life!"

A young boy who is interviewed says that it took him a while to understand the meaning of the project, but after working to help to paste portraits, he comes to see...
"True, we don't have the same face or the same character, but we are all human beings."

http://www.insideoutproject.net/





PS: At 10:39 of the video, the scene changes unexpectedly to show that the project in the mysterious, forsaken island of Hashima in Japan. Check out the aural mood change that occurs with use of the Spanish guitars in the soundtrack.