Street Art Portraits of the Homeless

Wooster Collective points us to an anonymous artist doing an interesting kind of social outreach project. Similar in subject matter to French street artist JR’s work, the artist photographs homeless residents of San Francisco then does large scale graphite drawings of them. They’re then wheat pasted in cities around the world. It’s a beautiful and poignant way to represent these often overlooked members of society. The artist explains the story behind the above photo:

…this one is in San Francisco, i took this guys photo a couple of months before this piece and put it in the alley i often see him in. I did this piece during the day and coinceadently he saw me putting up the piece “ah man thats cool as shit”. about 15 minutes later im finishing the piece and 5 cops came upon me I spent the next 45 minutes explaining as to why not to arrest me.Piece stayed up in spite of the police , they went and asked the manager of the building if he wanted to press charges, ” nah man i like that just clean up my sidewalk” so i did. The subjects name is ” Bones ” he plays the harmonica.

Wooster Collective: Bones in San Francisco