The site of Nemi is known to have sheltered two huge ancient galleys that belonged to Caligula, sunk in place after his death. In order to find them, a spectacular archaeological excavation, which involved draining the lake, was organised in the inter-war period. The two ships, found in an exceptional state of preservation, were exhibited with other remains in a dedicated museum built on the shore. 

With its totalitarian architecture, the Museo delle Navi Romane was both a popular tourist attraction and a piece of nationalist propaganda. It was burnt down during the Second World War. Preserved for almost two thousand years by the waters of Lake Nemi, the ships were destroyed in a few days. The museum has since been restored. 

My shoot at the Museo delle Navi Romane took place in the context of the pandemic. I had already made a first visit to Nemi in 2020, but the site was closed to the public because of the pandemic. During my 2021 residency with the Institut français, I only had access for one day. On site, I noticed two things: the museum is almost always deserted, and its architecture exposes above all an immense and eloquent void. The models of the two ships, built after the museum was restored, seem tiny on display in this ghost ship. 

The first floor of the museum, which was originally set up to view the ships from above, is now closed to the public, as is the roof of the building. Instead of visitors, you pass countless boxes containing terracotta remains that are waiting, numbered and grouped in bags, for storage that will probably never come. 

A few statues, most of them crippled, complete the space, along with signage and scenography designed to furnish the space willy-nilly. The most impressive thing is the silence within the museum. The slightest step, the slightest shock is amplified by the structure, reminiscent of the sound of public swimming pools when they are empty. When I took these shots, I soon realised that, although I didn't have the equipment, the most sensible thing to do was to take video footage. Even deserted, even if nothing is moving, this museum is crying out to be filmed. So I leave the option of making a film there, once my photographic work is completed. 

When the second world war broke out, some of the bronzes from the ships were placed in the reserves of the National Roman Museum. They can still be seen in Rome, in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, behind heavy protective glass, in the semi-darkness of the room dedicated to them. Among them are two colossal apotropaic hands. 

As a result of the fire in 1944, the history of Caligula's ships now exists only in the form of an archive, kept at the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci in Milan. This museum was in fact founded by Guido Ucelli, the engineer behind the hydraulic system that allowed the lake to be drained. I worked there in March and September 2021. These two visits allowed me to reproduce the period prints and slides that Ucelli used during his conferences related to the lake. I photographed these prints on glass through a magnifying glass, in order to reproduce certain details that escape the general view or which, when enlarged, take the form of clues for my own investigation. 

Among the archives in Milan, I found an envelope of photographs of divers busy freeing the stern of a ship from the mud. I reproduced these images, taking care to preserve in my large format prints the various traces that time has left on the masks and bodies of these divers: oxidation, discolouration, fingerprints, etc. 

To dry the lake, the engineers and archaeologists involved in the excavation of the ships had the idea of restoring the ancient Nemi outfall. This was a pipe system used to regulate the level of the lake. Numerous photographs document this process and the different sections of this gallery. For L'esprit du lieu, one of my projects consists of manipulating the period prints preserved in Milan to invent a spectral world, stripped of its reference points, and to see a few apparitions sometimes appear. 

Finally, the museum holds many boxes of negatives from the Lake Nemi excavations. Made with silver gelatine bromide on glass, most of them are very damaged. In order to preserve them, they cannot be handled, and often not even looked at. Equipped with a compact camera and a makeshift light, I tried to reproduce the negatives at the top of each box, i.e. accessible from a distance, without direct contact. Taken from a certain angle, the black of the negatives becomes a mirror and gives a distant idea of what the positive image, damaged by alterations, might have been. 

I created this project, entitled L’esprit du lieu, with this view of Lake Nemi in mind. As it is not dated, it is difficult to know whether it was made before or after the excavations. The wrecks of Caligula's ships may lie in wait beneath the surface of the water.