Almost Gone (8 Photos)

People who almost disappear

A child blends into the steps. Bronze travelers lose pieces of their bodies, and tiny ice figures melt in the sun. These eight photographs follow people slipping out of view through camouflage, worn paint and carefully shaped empty space.

👤 Invisible Child — Ogilvy & Mather Shanghai for UNICEF, China 🇨🇳

The steps carry straight across his shirt and knees. This is Invisible Child, a UNICEF campaign that used camouflage to make overlooked children visible. The credits name Kevin Lee and Fan Ng as creative directors, with Haohui Zhou and Bin Liu as artists.

More: The Invisible Child campaign

👁️ Hidden in an Eye — By JR and Liu Bolin in New York, USA 🇺🇸

There is a person standing inside that eye. For their 2012 collaboration, JR pasted up a portrait of Liu Bolin, who then painted JR into the image. Photographs of the process show the camouflage taking shape.

More: The original JR and Liu Bolin feature

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📷 Photo: New York Street Art

🧊 Minimum Monument — By Néle Azevedo in Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪

These figures really do disappear. Azevedo’s Minimum Monument replaces permanent heroic statues with small, anonymous people made of ice. The project began as a critique of public monuments; its 2009 Berlin installation with WWF also connected it to climate change.

More: Climate change in street art

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🧳 Fragmented Travelers — By Bruno Catalano in Paris, France 🇫🇷

A shirt, a bag, a pair of legs. Then less and less of a person, until the last plinth holds almost nothing. This photograph appears in Catalano’s 2019 Paris exhibition archive, beside the Seine at Quai Malaquais.

💡 Artist Fact: The missing middle started with a mistake. In 2004 a flaw in Catalano’s Cyrano figure led him to hollow out its chest, and he names his four years as a sailor from 1982 as a key inspiration for the travelers.

More: Bruno Catalano’s fragmented travelers

🎨 Faces in the Plaster — By Borondo in Sapri, Italy 🇮🇹

The wall keeps showing through. Two heads emerge from the flaking plaster, then break back into patches of gray and pink. Borondo painted in Sapri for Oltre il Muro in 2013; his own project history records the intervention.

More: Borondo’s Sapri photo series

🫂 Absent — By Innerfields in Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪

Her arms still hold the shape of someone who is no longer there. Innerfields made Absent in Berlin-Wedding as a counterpart to their Kyiv mural Present. The artists dedicated it to people who lose loved ones to war.

More: Absent by Innerfields

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🕳️ Mélancolie — By Albert György in Geneva, Switzerland 🇨🇭

A head bows into an opening where the chest should be. The hands and feet make the body feel solid, while the view passes straight through its middle. György’s sculpture is titled Mélancolie; this photograph was taken in Geneva.

More: More art about being human

📄 Invisible — JWT Melbourne for the Australian Childhood Foundation, Australia 🇦🇺

The blue trousers give it away. JWT Melbourne placed posters over child-sized mannequins for the Australian Childhood Foundation’s Invisible campaign. It is a staged installation about neglect: the small figure is physically present but covered by a message about being overlooked.

More: The Invisible campaign