Coverage:

©AFP/File / Raul Arboleda

A giant photograph is seen pasted on a roof at the Commune 1, a shantytown in Medellin

MEDELLIN, Colombia (AFP) - An artist, a vegetable seller, a mother of 14 -- gigantic portraits of these everyday "heroes" on the streets of Medellin aim to give young people something other than the city's violent street gangs to look up to.

The photographs of 20 residents have sprung up in "comuna uno", one of the toughest areas of the Colombian city of 2.3 million that in the 1990s was a battle ground between powerful cocaine cartels and the government.

"We are paying homage to these heroes of daily life -- simple neighborhood people who may not have a diploma, but are an example to children because they are not compromised by illegality," said psychologist Lina Alvarez, who is involved in the campaign sponsored by the city government.

There are no sports stars or famous singers. The portraits are of people like Maria Emiliana Oquendo, an 86-year-old dressmaker who raised 14 children, and Jonathan Uribe, who opened a free rap school.

©AFP/File / Raul Arboleda

Children walk past a giant photograph pasted on a facade at the Commune 1

At first, many people thought the government was honoring the memory of victims of the criminal gangs and guerrilla groups that have been at war with the authorities in Colombia for nearly half a century.

Mounted on Medellin's walls and rooftops, the images can be seen from cable cars that were built in 2006 to reach the city's poorest mountainside neighborhoods.

"We want to show people who ride the Metrocable that their neighborhood's future is not violence, that it is full of positive things," said Alvarez.

One of the icons of the exhibition, Gilberto Idarraga, a vegetable seller when he's not gliding across a dance floor, does not expect his sudden exposure in the media to bring him glory.

"Our contribution is just to always struggle to do our best," he told the local newspaper El Colombiano.

It was the children in the neighborhood schools who chose these modest and hard-working people as models.

©AFP/File / Raul Arboleda

View of a giant photograph pasted on the roof of a house at the Commune 1

But the initiative was directly inspired by a French artist, photographer JR, who is known for his giant portraits of youths in the gritty Parisian suburbs, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the Palestinian territories.

The Medellin pictures, taken by Colombian photographer Felipe Mesa, are accompanied by just a few words -- "harmony and tolerance," "love," "liberty" -- that emphasize the desire to change the image of these neighborhoods and the exhibition's message of peace.

Dubbed "Heroes without borders," the exhibition's title alludes to the "invisible borders" that delineate the territories of organized crime groups in Medellin, ranked the 14th most dangerous city in the world with a murder rate of 70 per thousand inhabitants last year.