Cherry Trees
Cherry blossom, the pandemic and 20th Century dystopian anime
Book published by Kehrer Verlag in November 2024 / Cover artwork by Claude Eigan
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.
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.