Cherry Trees
Japanese animes and TV series were very present during my childhood in France, in the 80s and 90s. They left a durable imprint in my mind, as many of them have proved to be visionary, anticipating major environmental and humanitarian crises.
I happened to be in Japan in March and April 2020 at the rise of the Covid-19 pandemic. This also coincided with the time of Hanami, the celebration of the short-lived cherry blossom, a symbol of the transient and fragile nature of life.
There, I documented intuitively this unprecedented time: the strangeness of the situation, the wariness, the invisible threat.
I was naturally drawn to what reminded me of the TV programs of my youth: uncanny places and objects which look both familiar and weird; a discomforting stillness like in a nightmare where everything moves slowly but surely in an unwanted direction; a confusing feeling of not knowing what is real or unreal; young people, worried yet confident, who look like the starring characters of one of these series for children.
‘Cherry Trees’ tells the story of several transmissions.
It is of course a story about a virus. About that moment a virus started to disrupt the entire planet.
It also talks about the virus I contracted like many other French children in front of their TV screens, that of a strong attachment to Japan. These images are in a way made with my child eyes.
And this book witnesses a transmission from fiction to the real world. It creates a dialogue with old dystopian stories which, through their prescient quality, have started to look like our current reality.