150 pages Edited by JR Designed by Tonker & Palou 21 x 17 cm Language: French & English Paperback Publisher: Free Presse 2005
JR's first book, published when he was twenty-two, before any of the work he is now known for existed. He had started taking photographs in 2001 and spent the following years travelling across Europe to find the people writing and painting in the street, camera in hand — the period in which he began calling himself a photograffeur rather than choosing between the two. Carnet de rue is what came back from those years: a field notebook on street expression in all its forms, assembled by someone still inside the scene rather than looking at it from a gallery.
Everything that made JR famous comes after this — Portrait d'une génération on the walls of Montfermeil, then Face2Face across the separation wall in 2007, then the TED Prize and Inside Out. That is exactly what gives the book its value now: it is the only document of the starting point, printed in a small run by a small publisher for a photographer nobody had heard of.
