“We are the result of our past,” declares Carlos Folgoso Sueiro. The past haunts the Spanish photographer’s project Beyond the Lake. It emerges alongside the remnants of a flooded village and from the dim light of an at-home abattoir. It inhabits the traditional dress of a woman standing pensively in a forest clearing and the frightening costume of a festival-goer. But the present is equally alive, hinted at in the fire-scorched forests and references to hydroelectric dams.
In a bid to reignite his creativity, Folgoso Sueiro casts a cinematic lens on his native Galicia—a corner of northwestern Spain that is at war with rural depopulation, climate crisis, reindustrialization, and the long shadow of emigration. In his mysterious images, one finds tales of struggle and melancholy but also resilience. Rather than bleak documents of the hardships of life in this embattled region, his photographs are imbued with a painterly, allegorical glow. In Beyond the Lake, he weaves an emotional, atmospheric sense of place—and himself within it.
After more than a decade in Italy working as a photojournalist, Folgoso Sueiro returned to Galicia a few years ago. He had come back to help care for an aging grandparent and find balance after the demands of his work covering international news had worn him down. The shift was a struggle; a debilitating back injury combined with a personal loss contributed to a far-reaching mood of melancholy. After having photographed nonstop for work, he slowly made his way back to a more personal relationship with the camera, consuming books and immersing himself in paintings and films along the way.
The first images he took, before any concept of a project emerged, reflected his mood back to him. “I understood that I was shooting my own melancholy,” he explains. The sun is nearly smudged out of the sky, and raindrops disrupt the glassy surface of a river. Throughout his images, one can see references to the worldbuilding of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and the dramatic paintings of Rembrandt and Francis Bacon. As he reacquainted himself with his homeland and cultivated a sense of routine, he began to see the possibility of a new project.
A turning point in his process came when he heard news that a village, flooded for the construction of a dam 30 years prior, would be visible for a short period of time. He rented a place nearby to avoid the long back-and-forth drives. As night rolled in, he roamed the abandoned village. “I connected to this place. I felt as if something was waiting for me there— that I needed to be there,” he says. The resulting images are eerie, as if taken in a war zone, and yet, there is something that endures within them; the structures that emerge bear witness to what once was and what is now. The dam had been opened to address widespread drought, one of the most pressing concerns in a warming world. Galicia has also been ravaged by forest fires, devouring acreage at a clip.
By this point, Folgoso Sueiro knew he had a project—one that spoke to the past as much as to the future of Galicia, shaped by the rapidly increasing threats of climate change. He also knew that he could continue to photograph, to expand the work and its brief, drawing in universal themes of abandonment and nostalgia that he found across the region. His images of Galicia, he realized, were missing people, a choice that had corresponded to his own frame of mind. Recovering from a recent surgery and adjusting to the new parameters of his life, he set out to find people who reflected a part of himself; people who also kept to themselves or were somehow alone. “I was fascinated by these people who live alone in the forest, without electricity or water. I started to visit them—not to photograph them, but to speak with them.”
He returned multiple times before photographing anyone, listening to stories and sharing meals. After time and with great sensitivity, he photographed Adolfo and Raúl—a couple who had been marginalized by their neighbors. The decision to finally make a portrait was intuitive and arrived at slowly. This approach speaks to the project’s development, naturally in tune with the artist’s methodology; a slow unravelling of a deeper understanding of home. In photographing Galicia, he was also photographing himself. “To shoot from the inside, you must also shoot yourself, your house, your family. I photographed my cousin, my grandmother, my room, and so on. My family is Galicia. This flooded place is Galicia. This forest fire is Galicia,” he explains.
The difficulties of life, and how the past continues to influence the present, are never far from view. Folgoso Sueiro addresses abandonment and alcoholism in his photographs and the role that earlier waves of emigration played on the descendants of the people who left. A portrait of his cousin, who battles with alcohol abuse, is both unflinching and beautiful. “Galicia, today, is not a poor area,” he explains, “but it was in the past. In the last century, there was a lot of emigration for work. My father was left behind as a child with another family. He was supported by his parents, but he grew up without love. There were many children abandoned like this; the fathers did what they thought was right. We have many good things in Galicia; it’s changing for the better, but we still have this heritage of emigration, sadness, and alcoholism. We still suffer from this.”
Many of these stories unfold in a series of long-format captions, bolstering the images’ narrative flow as well as providing context. A sense of parallel and intersecting lives course through his images with an energy that churns below the surface. The series, much like a life, can be read multiple ways. In choosing to reference the works of earlier painters, Folgoso Sueiro opens a conversation across time, tying Galicia to the wider world whilst portraying it in a near-mythical light. Darkness is a metaphor, and sadness rings throughout, but if you look a second time, there is also connection—a gaze met, an embrace given, something that holds the eye and doesn’t let go. Entwining internal worlds and reality, Folgoso Sueiro has found a deeper understanding of his homeland and its people, buffeted by changing winds and difficulties, yet still holding on—still full of the power to enchant.
This project was one of the top winners of the LensCulture Critics’ Choice Awards 2025. Discover all of the winners – lots of great inspiration!
