By the Lake

By the Lake is a story on displacement that documents the impact that uprooting and regrounding of a large population on economic reasons has on the long term on the people that experienced it.

Approximately 18.0000 people from 20 villages on the Valea Muntelui area, on the former course of Bistrița river, in Neamț county, Romania, had to be internally displaced 60 years ago. They had to move everything, their houses and belongings, even their dead from the cemetery, to make room for the Izvorul Muntelui accumulation lake that was to provide enough water to fuel the Bicaz-Stejarul Hydropower plant and afterwards to provide electricity to the entire region of Moldova. This was the first big industrial project that the communists undertook when they gained the political power in Romania. It was meant to be the start of the industrialization of the country and the project was indeed one of the most ambitious done until then in the entire region of Eastern Europe.

Although this was an event that happened more than 60 years ago, the long-term impact that the construction of the hydropower has had on the population that were displaced was insufficiently documented. There are only a few people still alive that can recount what happened then and I considered this to be the best time to document the cultural memory of these locals that had lost everything in order to make possible Romania’s ambitious electrification project in the country’s early Communist years