The first of the five books in the Archivi della Basilicata (Archives of Basilicata) series casts light on the documentary heritage of what is now the Bradano and Metaponto Reclamation Consortium. The book is set out as an investigation into the psychological and political issues connected to the changing landscape, with all the implications on the future to come and the cancellation of the past. This first volume shows the direction that the series will take, both in a literary and a purely academic sense: the texts depart from the photographs, using them as a precious original source and visual pretext for their investigations and speculations. The images guide us through the areas affected by the reclamation and the development of the water system, its groundworks, artesian wells and artificial channels. New, built shapes stand out with violent lyricism in frozen and privative settings. We stand before a new politic-cultural and geological landscape, reclamation will change the course of things forever.