Dust

The very, very strange beauty of Kolmanskop, Namibia. A diamond town from the early twentieth century, made in a vision of Germany. And then the diamonds dried up. In the late 1950s the town was abandoned ... deserted and desert-ed, as the sand lands surrounding slowly invaded the settlement. The painted walls had somehow anticipated their fate, providing ethereal backgrounds to the interior deserts. An architectural Ozymandias, Nothing beside remains: round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, / The lone and level sands stretch far away....

And an echo of the inundated photographs of James Casebere, the model interiors succumbing to water, the flood confounding the datum of time and space ...




James Casebere, Nevision Underground #1, 2001

(Sound track: Mazzy Star, Into Dust. Images: various unknown photographers. Yes: I want to go there ...)