Dystopian Spring: How Alexandre Morvan’s Cherry Trees Captures the Haunting Beauty of a Pandemic in Japan
Welcome to this edition of [book spotlight]. Today, we uncover the layers of 'Cherry Trees,' by Alexandre Morvan (published by Kehrer Verlag). We'd love to read your comments below about these insights and ideas behind the artist's work.
In the spring of 2020, Tokyo’s streets emptied, but the cherry trees still bloomed.
Alexandre Morvan was there with his camera, witnessing a moment that felt like a scene from a dystopian film. The pandemic had drained the life from the city, yet nature carried on as if nothing had changed. This contrast—between beauty and fear, between tradition and uncertainty—is what shaped Cherry Trees. A book that captures a world stuck between the familiar and the surreal.
Morvan didn’t set out to create a pandemic project.
At first, he was just making pictures, recording what was happening around him. But as time passed, he started noticing unsettling similarities to the dystopian anime he grew up watching. It was as if those fictional disasters had suddenly become real.
Cherry blossoms have never looked more unsettling than in 2020.
Cherry Trees
In the spring of 2020, as the world shut down, Japan’s cherry blossoms kept blooming. Cherry Trees is a haunting visual record of this paradox—where beauty and crisis collided in an unforgettable moment in history. French photographer Alexandre Morvan found himself in Tokyo as the pandemic unfolded, capturing the contrast between the fleeting joy of hanami and the growing uncertainty in the air.
At first, his images were spontaneous, but as the city grew quieter, the scenes reminded him of the dystopian anime he had watched as a child. The deserted streets, the towering billboards broadcasting emergency warnings, the fragile petals against the backdrop of an uncertain world—all of it felt like fiction made real. Blending documentary photography with a cinematic sensibility, Cherry Trees explores themes of impermanence, isolation, and resilience.
With contributions from photography critic Iizawa Kōtarō and Japanese studies professor Julien Bouvard, this book offers more than a visual archive—it’s a reflection on how stories from the past shape our understanding of the present. (Kehrer Verlag ,Amazon)
Overview of the project: What drew you to document Japan’s cherry blossom season during the early days of the Covid pandemic, and how did the experience shape Cherry Trees?
I happened to be in Japan by chance in March and April 2020 at the time when France and most countries started to experience their first lockdowns.
Staying at home was not compulsory in Japan so people would still go out. But during the last weeks of my trip when a global state of emergency was declared, the streets started to empty.
At first, I made photos without a specific intent in mind. Having been to Japan on previous occasions, I could feel a very different vibe. Time was suspended and it felt like being in a dream, where things would look familiar and weird at the same time. I tried to express this in my photographs. And, of course, my own feelings about the situation had an influence on the type of images I ended up making.
Artistic vision and approach: Your photographs blend the serenity of cherry blossoms with the unsettling atmosphere of the pandemic. How do you balance these contrasting themes in your work?
This series was made in a very paradoxical period. Hanami, the season of cherry blossom, is a very festive time of the year in Japan. And there was a tension between this moment of celebration and the menace that everyone was facing.
Hanami is symbolically quite complex. Cherry trees in full bloom convey joy and, as you mention it, a feeling of serenity as they are very enjoyable and beautiful to look at. This moment is also extremely brief. Cherry blossom alludes to the concept of “mono no aware”, which is about the ephemeral state of things and of nature. They are a symbol of the transient nature of life, its precious and fragile quality. This was particularly meaningful in the pandemic situation.
Were there specific moments when the beauty of the blossoms felt almost surreal against the atmosphere of fear and stillness?
At the beginning of Hanami, people would still gather in parks under the cherry trees, enjoying this fleeting moment, admiring their beauty and trying not to care too much about the upcoming menace. But by the end of my trip most of the cherry flowers had fallen and were lying on the ground. And people had all but disappeared, as the giant billboards of Tokyo were screening videos of the governor advising everyone to stay home.
In my work, I also tried to express these contrasting notions by representing trees in different stages of being. And by inserting uncanny images or details into an otherwise more serene flow of images.
Storytelling in photography: You reference dystopian anime as an influence in this series. How did these fictional worlds inform your narrative and visual choices? Do you see parallels between the crises imagined in those stories and the reality you were capturing?
Japanese animes and TV series were ubiquitous during my childhood in France in the 1980s and 90s. Many of them were quite visionary in anticipating environmental and humanitarian crises.
A lot of them talked about nuclear catastrophes, obviously, and also about worlds which are becoming uninhabitable. The more well-known examples are some animated films produced but the Ghibli studio team in the 80ties an 90ties, like Nausicaä, Princess Mononoke or Pompoko, three tales which deal with environmental issues and the danger of human activity for the planet. But these themes were also very present in a lot of lesser-known programs for children. To give one emblematic example, in the TV series Spectreman, pollution takes the shape of giant monsters who attack humanity back.
Early 2020, the rising pandemic was not the only global concern. Some of the worst fires that ever occurred in Australia had been burning for the past 9 months.
So, while I was starting to make images in this context, the memory of these programs came back almost instantly.
I researched them online and took screenshots of them, which I later included in the book. At the same time, I also started to look for people and places that reminded me of these series and animes.
The pictures are somehow made with my childhood eyes and this book is a dialogue between fiction from the past and our current reality.
Challenges and perseverance: Capturing a transformative moment in history can be daunting. What were the key challenges you faced while documenting the pandemic in Japan, and how did you adapt?
One complex thing to translate was the atmosphere and particularly the stillness of everything and everyone at the time, not knowing what to do and what to expect.
I tried to express that in the edit via sequences of similar images which give the feeling of slow motion. And also by having a flow of images that is both peaceful and nervous at times, to convey a feeling of calmness before a storm.
But the biggest challenge was to visually show something invisible.
I thought of ways to represent the pandemic symbolically. For example, via the use of smoke, color filters or superimposition, and via some surreal elements like fading objects or figures. These were a set of tools and manipulations that I used to express something unbelievable as well as something the eye cannot see.
And I asked Claude Eigan, an artist whose work I love, to translate this threat. He created a title illustration which looks like a menacing cloud on the cover of the book above an iconic Japanese landscape.
The work of Claude Eigan deals about permanent change and the instability inherent in all things, so it felt really relevant to the theme.
What I like about the cover of the book is that fiction and reality converge visually. It is hard to see if the anime-like title is part of the image or not. As if the two had somehow become one.
Finally, inserting images from anime and TV series also helped me visualize this pandemic and, more broadly, the vulnerability of the world, whose condition has worsened since these programs were broadcast in the 20th Century.
Role of the photographer: As a foreigner photographing in Japan during a global crisis, how did your perspective shape the way you approached the cultural and emotional layers of this project?
I’m not a cultural expert of Japan and I don't really consider this work as documentary.
These images are very subjective as I have been trying to express what it was to be immersed in this stranger than fiction moment. That’s really what I tried to reflect in this book. I happened to be in Japan at this time but it’s a feeling that, I think, most of us experienced at the same time in different regions of the world.
Photography as cultural observation: Julien Bouvard a professor in Japanese Studies at Lyon 3 University, highlights hope and resilience in your work. How do you see photography as a medium for exploring and conveying cultural resilience during times of crisis?
I really like what Julien says at the end of the preface of the book: “If hope is perceptible in these photographs from an anxious period, it is resolutely found on the side of plants, omnipresent, surviving despite the cracked concrete, indifferent to viruses from the human species.”
And indeed, during the pandemic, nature has been slowly winning ground.
For a couple of years, the environment has been less affected by human activity. And I hope these photographs manage to show that through little details; like plants wrapped in bandages, seemingly recovering, or with this group of deer who wander confidently in an empty city street.
To discover more about this intriguing body of work and how you can acquire your own copy, you can find and purchase the book here. (Kehrer Verlag ,Amazon)
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