Originally, the diamond mining town of Kolmanskop, which is found in the Namib Desert in southern Namibia, was founded in the early 1900s by Germans. However, by the mid-1950s, it was fully abandoned.
According to the BBC, it was once “one of the wealthiest” towns in the entire world. For example, the town’s hospital had the very first X-ray unit in the entire southern hemisphere.
More than a century ago, in 1908, railway worker Zacherias Lewala was clearing train tracks and found diamonds, which he showed to his supervisor, August Stauch, a former employee at De Beers. The result was a diamond rush and the quick building of Kolmanskop for hundreds of European and Namibian miners.
In 1912, the town produced a million carats of diamonds, or a whopping 12% of the world’s total. Technological developments allowed people to systematically scrape the desert floor for diamonds.
“In the town’s heyday, the precious stones were so easy to find that they could be picked out of the sand. Workers armed with jam jars would crawl on hands and knees, filling them with diamonds,” the BBC writes.
This didn’t last. The local resources were mostly used up by the 1930s. And people moved on elsewhere. For instance, further southwards, toward Namibia’s border with South Africa, new diamond deposits were found.
The very last families abandoned Kolmanskop in 1956.
Now, the town is in a restricted zone that is controlled by the Namdeb Diamond Corporation (owned by De Beers and the Namibian government). The town is a major tourist and photographer destination.
In 2015, photographer McEvoy traveled to the ghost town and took photos of the sand-filled homes for her series ‘Sand Castles.’
“From the outside, the buildings actually look rather unremarkable. They blend into the bleak and barren landscape,” McEvoy shared with Tech Insider.
However, the dull exterior contrasts with the bright interior. “The wallpaper is different in each room and the contrast of these incredibly colorful, old, peeling wallpapers and the sand is so surreal," the photographer said.
McEvoy opened up to Tech Insider that she tried to get a permit to visit the town, but the office was closed. So, she said that she “had to sneak in to capture the images in the beautiful golden light at dawn and dusk all on my own.”
According to the photographer, she enjoyed “the feeling of having the entire town” to herself. She even took self-portraits where she danced in the rooms in a dress.
McEvoy decided to turn the photos into a series only after she visited the town. “As soon as I stepped foot in there, I was so overcome with emotion, I knew I had to do something more with it,” she said.
The photographer later filled an abandoned home in Australia with tons of sand to turn it into a thematic gallery featuring her photos of Kolmanskop.
“Having a pop-up exhibition in a house due to be demolished tied in really well with my whole concept around the impermanence of everything,” the photographer told Tech Insider.
According to McEvoy’s website, in her works, she explores themes “surrounding the duality of human nature, our relationship to the environment, and the feminine condition.”
She adds that she is a fan of fine art, has a “strong passion” for music photography, and is happiest when she is taking photos in nature.
