Photography · Monograph · Installation

Ode to the Lake Sacalaia

2021–2023

Pigment on rag prints; photographic monograph; multi-component installation

Edition prints: 13 × 19 in (ed. of 5), 24 × 36 in (ed. of 3)

Exhibition & Publication

Ode to the Lake Sacalaia — first photographic monograph, Cornel/Henry Art, 2022 (edition of 500).

Ode to the Lake Sacalaia — solo exhibition, Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery, Cal State LA, July–August 2023, curated by Mika Cho.

On the Work

Ode to the Lake Sacalaia takes its name from a freshwater lake in Cluj County, Romanian Transylvania — the deepest natural lake in the country, a body of water that conceals, by legend, a Roman village swallowed when the salt mine beneath it caved in some two thousand years ago. Local tradition holds that on clear days the basilica's spire is still visible from the surface, and that divers who have descended in search of it have not always returned.

Fodoreanu spent his childhood summers on this lake, often with a Leica camera in hand. The negatives sat undeveloped for three decades. The work returns to them — combining the original images, double-exposed and partially decayed by time, with new photographs made on later visits to Sacalaia and to the Transylvanian landscape that surrounds it. The result is a project that holds two times at once: the boy who first photographed the lake without a plan, and the man who has come back to read what was there.

The work has been published as a photographic monograph (Cornel/Henry Art, 2022, edition of 500) with essays by Seph Rodney, PhD and Shana Nys Dambrot, and presented as a multi-component installation at Cal State LA's Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery in 2023, with an exhibition essay by Peter Frank. The book was reviewed in Hyperallergic, Whitehot Magazine, HereIn Journal, Photobook Journal, and elsewhere. Fodoreanu's photographs from the project are held in the permanent collections of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), the De Pietri Artphilein Foundation (Switzerland), the Museum of Photographic Arts (San Diego), and Printed Matter (New York).

From the Critical Writing

Anne Sexton wrote in the poem “Rowing,” that “This story ends with me still rowing.” This prophecy does bear itself out in the body of her lifetime work. It also bears itself out in the photography of Cornel Fodoreanu, who has created a visual testimonial which seems to be addressed to a lake, but is actually more about the lives that have escaped it … If we are living, still intact, we find ourselves at the surface, in the boat, still rowing.

— Seph Rodney, PhD, “To Be Rowing” (2022)

For a creator already attracted to the rhythm of ancient dialects and the power of pattern and mystery unfolding in his own psychical narrative, Fodoreanu’s is a journey in which we can all see ourselves reflected. Each of us has had a lake or something like it in our young lives — a place we knew as children that held fear and fascination, and perhaps still does … What was intuitive to the child became intentional to the man.

— Shana Nys Dambrot, “The Lake: Monsters & Metaphors” (2022)

Fodoreanu’s lake is his alone, and he makes art of it from the inside out — from the dreamt to the dream to the act of dreaming … C Fodoreanu does not document his dear Lake Sacalaia, he documents, and reawakens, his dreams of it.

— Peter Frank, “Dreamscape with Lake: C Fodoreanu’s Sacalaia” (2023)

Artist's Statement

Sacalaia (Pike Lake) is the deepest freshwater natural lake in Transylvania. The legend states that the lake formed when a salt mine under a small Roman village caved in about 2000 years ago, leading to the flooding of the village. At times, on clear water days, one can see the tip of the basilica. As a kid, we took many trips in rowboats over the lake in the search for the old basilica.

In this project, I combine images made as a young boy during these trips with recently created images, paying homage to a younger self journeying towards identity, searching for faith and ideals, reconnecting to what holds me true to myself.

As I relived the emotions of the past boat trips, the tales of the lost divers searching for the depths of the lake, and the innocence of looking ahead, a connection appeared in my mind with the stories I witness daily at work in my pediatrics practice. Learning of children blissfully dreaming to a future of unknown, planning adventures and explorations in the search of self and their place in the world, only to slowly fade away beared down by the heaviness of an unforgiven life, took center stage. In the analogy with the lake, only a few of these kids manage to swim to the top, realizing their full potential, while the others are getting lost in the depths of life.

Ode to the Lake Sacalaia is a visual exploration of the mysteries of the lake and of growing up, from its surface to its inner depths, from the tension of self-discovery to the in-between states of one's self-awareness, reconnecting to what holds one true to oneself. It is an homage to younger selves searching for faith and ideals, an attempt to make sense of a ceaseless loss of potential.

Sacalaia

1990s, printed 2021 · pigment on rag · 13 × 19 in. (ed. of 5) · 24 × 36 in. (ed. of 3)