Huge faces smile, grimace, and glare at you as you walk by St. Mark’s place. Plastered on anywhere from wooden blue scaffolding to barren concrete walls around the East Village, these magnified portraits serve to intrigue and perplex the viewer. These are not the recognizable visages of celebrities and political figures, but the faces of “average” men and women. The photos are all part of the growing Inside Out Project, “a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work” (insideoutproject.net). People from all around the world are encouraged to upload their personal portraits on the project’s website. They would then receive a poster of their image, and have the choice of posting it wherever they want for the world to see and admire. From what I saw in St. Marks and from the online gallery, none of the photos are particularly provocative, as modern art is often stereotyped to be, but more evocative and mysterious. Who are these people really, and what can we learn from their smiles, grimaces, and glares?

Source: http://www.insideoutproject.net/