50 images Created 29 Sep 2010
Namibia, ghost-towns and diamonds
A surreal ghost town hidden in the heart of the Namibian desert, Kolmanskop, is a dystopian scenario where disturbing images about life on Earth after men's disappearance become a living reality. This remote location in South Namibia is becoming more popular after being featured in the hit post-apocalyptic drama 2024 TV series Fallout, based on a retrofuturistic video game set during the 3rd millennium. But the history of Kolmankshop is much older and more fascinating of a video set because this harsh environment of sand stretched between desert and Ocean hides one of the most intriguing chapters of the diamond rush in Namibia, where diamonds represent one of the most important natural resources, contributing approximately 10% of GDP. The history of these stainless objects of desire in Namibia, then a German Empire colony, began in 1908 when the black worker Zacharias Lewala found a diamond while working at the railroad not far from the port town of Lüderitz. In a few days, many German miners settled in this area, and soon after, the German government started to exploit the diamond fields in the Sperrgebiet, the "Forbidden Area," where access is rigidly prohibited even today. Driven by the enormous wealth, the residents transformed the mining town of Kolmanskop into a German town in the middle of the desert, including a hospital with the first x-ray station in the Southern Hemisphere. The town declined after World War I when the diamond field slowly depleted. From 1954, the desert sand slowly overruled the abandoned buildings of this fascinating ghost town where you think you're in a thriller, taken over by the desert sand that seems to match the pastel tones of the original paint on the walls. The long and phantasmagorical corridor of the old hospital, illuminated by the chiaroscuro of the rooms' windows, seems to have been designed by a director of photography to shoot an apparition. In 1990, Kolmanskop opened as a tourist attraction, with the sand as the only inhabitant and with the certainty that in another 50 or 60 years, this new owner will have buried the "richest city in the world" forever. Not far from this unreal Wilhelmine colonial Germany frozen in time, saved from the desert climate, Lüderitz is a harbour town founded in 1883 on one of the least hospitable coasts of Africa where centuries before landed the Portuguese Vasco da Gama, the first European to reach India by sea. Lüderitz began as a German trading post until 1909 when the discovery of diamond fields enjoyed a sudden surge of prosperity. Today, diamond fields are far from Lüderitz, a remote town surrounded by desert. It has lost its economic importance but still preserves the unique charm of its Art Nouveau colonial buildings at the end of the world.
