“Vena (Vein) is mostly a travel, better to be said, a series of four travels through time, from 2014 to 2022. I felt the urgence to come back as if I was about to meet up again with a friend, hoping to make the relationship stronger and to decipher its growth”. Vena (Vein) is a photographic project based on the landscape. More specifically, the landscape I portrayed is the minerarian area of the Western Macedonia, in the province of Kozani. This is the largest excavation area of Europe and it comprehends the entire plateau where, nowadays, there are four, brown coal power stations which produce the 70% of the Greek basic necessities. My research started from the ex Aeval chemical factories near Ptolemaida. It is a huge complex fallen into disuse, which was built in the early Sixties. The brown coal was chemically enriched to increase its combustive power and then gasified to extract nitrogen. Later on, the production was converted to produce nitric fertilizers until the complex shut down in 1997. Today, among the vegetation, there are the majestic structure of the machinery, the two beautiful twin towers which contained water, the refrigerator towers, four gasometers, the thermal plant, the offices, the rolling drain stations, the storehouses and the tower of the urea’s rotating palletization, linked together by enlightened roads. Today the brown coal is transferred from the mine to the machineries and to the plants by the means of some rubber belts. They form a thick, half-movable web of terrestrial and aerial ways which are modified according to the production. The mine appears to be a construction site made of round terracings. It is a landscape eternally changing: new lakes are born due to the digging and the piled up inert material forms new hills. The gigantic cogged wheels of the extraction machines, produced in Germany, slowly move on and digest the earth, transforming the line of the border. This border area is neither clearly defined nor forbidden to the intruder. In 2014 I entered it to visit Charavgi, one of the phantom villages which were cleared out by the authorities to make room for the mine. Today none of these exist anymore and the streets are changing, as the towns do. It is easy to get lost also for a local who wants to go to the cemetery. Notwithstanding, to get lost is not a problem for me, but an opportunity. Since 2014 the power plants of Kardia, Amyntaio and Ptolemais have been closed, whereas the new Ptolemaida 5 has been recently inaugurated. The new pit is next to the old Ptolemais plant and it has been considerably enlarged. Nowadays, it is the richest one. The vein runs under the Ptolemais complex and, as such, the plant will be demolished in favor of the mining extraction. In 2020 the same vein caused the eviction of Palia Ampelia, a characteristic village which had a school, a church and the recreative center for the ones who worked in the power plant, along with their families. The village of Mavropigi was evacuated too, as it was too close to the embankment of the digging area. Around this pit the lignite seems to be of high quality and the short distance between the pit and the new Ptolemaida 5 guarantees its future enlargement. But some important doubts still linger on this very future. Greece has been compelled by the European Union to dismiss its coal dependence by 2028, but the country has just opened a new coal plant. For now, the uncertain energetic supplies from UE suggest that the deadline will be postponed and the transition hampered. It is sure, though, that the landscape made by the vein will remain, rapidly changing the lifestyle and the habits of the people who live in this peripheral area of Europe.