It’s impossible to look at photographer Erwan Fichou’s Miradors (Spanish for ‘balconies’) collection without smiling. Each photograph features a tree, in which there is… a person. The series of photographs was inspired not by his family tree but by a vision that Erwan was haunted by, of a man that he’d seen standing in a tree who ‘looked exactly like a UFO.’ 

On winning an artist residency in Mexico (presumably they expected him to reside in a house rather than a tree), he worked with city gardeners to shape trees into unusual shapes and invited the public to climb into them. And many people obliged (because nobody’s parents had ever thought to warn them about strange men inviting them into… trees).

The photographs come with no narrative but allow the viewer to interpret each photograph themselves. In one particularly striking shot, a man is standing at the top of a tree with a security camera pointed at his head (CC-Tree-V?). Regardless of your interpretation, you will no doubt stop to think and, more importantly, smile. And in the end, isn’t that what art should be about? 

​