BLACK VEINS
CZARNE ŻYŁY
”I felt the black veins flashing beneath me, black rivers in the flesh of the rock. I felt the veins I had crawled in, the veins that crawled now in me, and I thought the words blood and stream until they turned, churned — blood stream, blood stream, blood’s dream.”
„Oil People“ David Huebert
Black Veins is a poetic story about the traces left by the pioneers of Poland’s oil industry. I retraced the paths they followed as they discovered oil and established the world’s first organized system of oil extraction and refining. I encountered forgotten natural oil seeps hidden in forests, now visited only by wild animals seeking to rid themselves of parasites. Former estates, built with oil wealth, have fallen into ruin.
There is something mystical about oil. You can feel it when you stand beside an old oil well and breathe in the air, heavy with the smell of gasoline. You can also sense it in the earth, where hundreds of people lost their lives trying to extract it from the rock.
On the surface, it is just an ordinary forest. But the deeper you go, the more you sense the power of the oil beneath it.
In recent years, the traces of this forgotten historical boom have begun to disappear forever. Old wells are being filled in, pumpjacks are disappearing, and grass is slowly covering everything. The only thing that remains is the feeling that beneath our feet, it still exists, lives, and pulses — a dark wealth flowing through its black veins.
