PhotographerRomain Veillonrecently traveled to the deserts of Namibia , where he photographed theabandoned village of Kolmanskop , an inordinately evocative collection of previous wooden mansion now filled with waves of sand .
The village , abandoned now for nearly a century , was once abode toGerman diamond miners — entrepreneurs and railroad engineer who incite here intent on exploring the riches of the earth , only to find in the death that the earth , like some slow and untrusty sea , moved back onto them , reclaiming even these few acres of land used for family .
The interiors of the bodily structure , with their framed wooden doors embedded , half - open , in the dunes , are like scenes from a oneirism , or visionary outtakes from a novel byKobo Abe . In some cases , they actually await like example .
But if the desert has won , swallowing all of these building up to the waist , it ’s a beautiful triumph , indeed . Doors assailable onto doors open onto landscapes , a desert popping up and disseminate in the midst of domesticity , like an inadvertent ( and more interesting ) “ Earth Room , ” Walter de Maria ’s soil - filled artwork here in New York .
Awesomely , the whole township is work now like a shape for the loose particles that will someday solidify here , cast into perfect and surreal cubes of sandstone perhaps long after the wall of the buildings have fallen : incomprehensible shapes and geology that take the soma of suffer elbow room . child will rise over them in awe of the comparatively minor buildings that once stomach here , monumentalized by this transformation into landscape painting .
I could look at these for hour — and , luckily , there are many , many more pic atVeillon ’s own website .
Those other photos includes exterior shot of some of the building that , from the outside , you would never cognise stop such strange geological wonders inside . [ Romain Veillon ]
DesertSand
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