Abandoned: Namib Desert

These images are from a diamond-mining ghost town in the Namib Desert. Some decades ago, a German mining corporation had built up and occupied a town next to the mines, housing the miners and their families. This natural installation began 40 years ago when the Germans returned to the Fatherland and abandoned this small cluster of homes. When I arrived, I found rows of utilitarian houses, sleeping in their bed of time, holding the secret of these images. Once left to the unhindered advances of the enormous linear sand dunes rolling back from the sea, the rooms began filling up with sand and the very familiar objects of daily living took on a surreal affect. This place speaks of the intimate relationship between the forces of Nature and the man-made. Abandoned by man, these spaces have been reclaimed by the wind and the sand, thus reuniting the exterior and the interior once more. In this place's unrelenting sunlight and howling silence, I found somewhere that proclaims Nature as the final winner. Man’s absence is only acknowledged by the endless pulse of the moving dunes.