NO ONE IS HERE FOR YOU is the new book from Julien Levy. It’s the first photography book from the Paris-born writer and filmmaker since Everyday is Doomsday (Damiani / Artbooks, NY), published more than five years ago. What draws a filmmaker back to photography? Obviously, a pandemic, and the momentary impossibility to shoot movies.

“I was writing all the time, but I realized I was writing all these movie screenplays I couldn’t shoot anyway. So I dusted off my film cameras, and I stepped outside”, Julien Levy says. These pictures were shot at night, in bars and on the streets of Tokyo, in days where social life was frowned upon. The idea was to capture the loneliness of young artists in a city that has forgotten about them. The cast is prestigious: up-and-coming actors, actresses, models, artists…and yet all of them are found in this state of frustration, of waiting, and, most importantly, melancholia. The book is filled with it: the memories of freedom long gone, the memories of impossible travels, the thoughts of an out-of-date lightness.

The book leans toward the dark side of life under a pandemic: everyone is lonely, work is long gone, and no one helps you. But there is beauty in it. The city is empty. We can own it. We can use it as our playground, with no tourists, no outcome, no goal. Melancholia can’t be beaten, but it can be channeled. Work is gone, but spirits are strong. With a camera ready, a flask of whiskey in the pocket, that’s what Julien Levy is telling us. In his words: cold hands, warm hearts.