Growing up in Transylvania, Romania, interdisciplinary artist and physician C Fodoreanu spent his childhood summers with his family at Lake Sacalaia (Lacul Ştiucilor), often carrying his Leica camera. Apparently the deepest freshwater lake in the country (its exact depth is unknown), Sacalaia is full of legends: divers who never returned from their attempts to reach its bottom; a sunken Roman colony; an underwater village inhabited by ghosts; a sunken basilica whose steeple, on a clear day, could be seen by rowers. In his first monograph, Ode to Sacalaia LakeFodoreanu explores the memories of the lake, its geography and its mythology through photographs.
Ode is divided into four sections, the first preceded by a series of spiral aerial photographs that zoom in on the nominal lake, the next with a poem by Fodoreanu and the last two with essays by art critics Seph Rodney and Shana Nys Dambrot . These essays, which near the end of the book, add contextual information about the lake and the artist without revealing Fodoreanu’s story before his photos can tell it.
The photographs are mostly black and white, haunting and grainy. Many include multiple or long exposures with moving figures; some are almost abstractions. The book begins with childhood photos of family members, rowboats, and reflections on the water. These images are marred by light leaks, inconsistencies in development, and scratches – all authentic results of an old camera and time. The second section features shadows of a figure performing swimming motions; overlapping arms, hands, heads and torsos create a sense of intimacy. These are accompanied by more vintage photos, ghostly images of children playing, jumping through hollows in the landscape, appearing to float in the air like swimmers walking on water. Or perhaps they represent the ghosts of the lost divers of Sacalaia.
Six photographs saturated with shades of indigo interrupt the grayscale images. While the series – depicting a man diving headfirst into water at night – stands out in terms of color and clarity, the images share the ambiguity of the others. The darkness is interrupted by small reflections: the moon, the small hairs on the diver’s limbs, the muscles of his torso, the spray of droplets and ripples on the water at the point of entry. The diver’s head is always severed at the surface of the water. The body appears to simultaneously enter from above and float just below.
The final section is made up of abstract black-and-white photographs so grainy they’re pointillist, and printed on paper thin enough to make the image on the next page stand out – perhaps like a yachtsman glimpsing what might be the roof of a basilica.
Turning the pages of Fodoreanu’s book becomes an active physical metaphor for growing old and leaving childhood behind, even though his memories can always be revisited. Ode to Sacalaia Lake is an investigation into the reconstruction of memory and mythology, naive hopes and fears, worry and play, captured by photography and altered by time.
Ode to Sacalaia Lake by C Fodoreanu (2022) is published by Cornel/Henry Art and is available online.
