Marina Caneve documents the end of the Haidari - Piraeus extension of Athens Metro Line 3 works

Three years after the photographic project Di roccia, fuochi e avventure sotterranee, where Ghella commissioned five renowned photographers to document five major infrastructure projects around the world, photographer Marina Caneve returns to Athens together with curator Alessandro Dandini de Sylva.

The Venetian artist, while maintaining her own authorial freedom, documents the completed works of the Haidari-Piraeus extension of Athens Metro Line 3 which she first photographed in 2020.
The subway, which connects Athens Airport with the port of Piraeus, has seen the creation of six new stations: Agia Varvara, Korydallos, Nikaia, Maniatika, Piraeus, and Dimotiko Theatro.

The Haidari-Piraeus extension of Line 3 stretches from Haidari, a residential neighborhood located in the western suburbs of the capital, to the Dimotiko Theatro station. The parallelism between the images of the construction site in its initial stage and the final result represents an ongoing dialogue between the construction site and the Greek capital, bearing witness to the relationship between the city, contemporary design, and historical memory.

The new section, with a transport capacity of 132,000 passengers per day, ensures a reduction in travel time of 60 minutes and a daily decrease of approximately 120 tons of CO2.

The excavation of the new stations has led to the discovery of a significant number of archaeological artifacts dating back to ancient Athens, including vases, amphorae, plates, figurines, and other artifacts that have been cataloged and archived by a group of expert archaeologists and specialists.

Both photographic records portray cityscapes alternating with the sterile interiors of the subway, and components of Ippodamo, the tunnel boring machine lowered and assembled 35 meters below the surface of one of the oldest cities in the world, which completed the project. There is a strong dialogue between technological innovation and the origins of the places, encompassing broad and comprehensive views that transition to microscopic details of the TBM. Ippodamo, in its elements, becomes an archaeological artifact, demonstrating the relationship between the machine and the contemporary city.

In 2021, 120 pictures from the  photographic campaign, including authors Alessandro Imbriaco  | Andrea Botto | Fabio Barile  | Francesco Neri | Marina Caneve, have been exhibited at the MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome.

The exhibition Di roccia, fuochi e avventure sotterranee, followed the name of the homonymous box set.