“In the old times, before the capital changed from Kyoto to Tokyo, cherry trees were considered a frightful sight. No one thought them a sign of beauty. […] Without a trace of human life beneath it, a cherry in full bloom becomes a fearful sight.”
The fifth instalment of Match & Company’s “Japanese Photography x Contemporary Literature” series.
In “Daido Moriyama: Ango”, Daido Moriyama’s frightening photographs of cherry trees are set to Ango Sakaguchi’s famous short-story “In the Forest, Beneath Cherries in Full Bloom”.
The “demonic beauty of the cherry blossoms” of Moriyama and Sakaguchi turn into a jet-black photobook of bottomless loneliness, emptiness and dangerous seduction.