Transfargarasan
Romania, October 2026
The Transfăgărășan road was built between 1970 and 1974 on the orders of Nicolae Ceaușescu. It was intended to allow troops to move across the Carpathians in the event of a Soviet invasion. The project was prompted by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Over time, this strategic route became a tourist attraction.
Building the road through the Făgăraș Mountains took enormous amounts of work and money and cost the lives of dozens of soldiers and workers. Together with the Vidraru Dam, completed in 1966, it reflected the state’s ambition to control nature: first by holding back a river, then by cutting through the mountains. Buildings were constructed to house the managers and officers overseeing the work. In 1972, before the road was finished, a private hunting lodge was built for Ceaușescu above Lake Bâlea. It appears in the photographs as a building shrouded in mist.
Taken in mid-October 2026, the photographs set this ambition against the reality of the landscape. Snow, mist and wind remind people of their place.
The high mountain section of the road will soon close for winter.
The opening photograph serves as an epilogue to the images from the northern part of the route. I took it at the Vidraru Dam, in the southern section. It establishes the scale of the project and introduces a story about the limits of state control over the landscape.
The series ends with a view of Lake Bâlea, photographed from a window of the Bâlea Lac mountain lodge. The lodge is run by a Transylvanian Saxon family, members of a German-speaking minority that faced repression under the communist regime.
Romania, October 2026
The Transfăgărășan road was built between 1970 and 1974 on the orders of Nicolae Ceaușescu. It was intended to allow troops to move across the Carpathians in the event of a Soviet invasion. The project was prompted by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Over time, this strategic route became a tourist attraction.
Building the road through the Făgăraș Mountains took enormous amounts of work and money and cost the lives of dozens of soldiers and workers. Together with the Vidraru Dam, completed in 1966, it reflected the state’s ambition to control nature: first by holding back a river, then by cutting through the mountains. Buildings were constructed to house the managers and officers overseeing the work. In 1972, before the road was finished, a private hunting lodge was built for Ceaușescu above Lake Bâlea. It appears in the photographs as a building shrouded in mist.
Taken in mid-October 2026, the photographs set this ambition against the reality of the landscape. Snow, mist and wind remind people of their place.
The high mountain section of the road will soon close for winter.
The opening photograph serves as an epilogue to the images from the northern part of the route. I took it at the Vidraru Dam, in the southern section. It establishes the scale of the project and introduces a story about the limits of state control over the landscape.
The series ends with a view of Lake Bâlea, photographed from a window of the Bâlea Lac mountain lodge. The lodge is run by a Transylvanian Saxon family, members of a German-speaking minority that faced repression under the communist regime.
