Photographer Captures 21 Surreal Photos Of Desert Sand Swallowing An Entire Town
A once-thriving diamond town now beign reclaimed by the desert
There's something deeply unsettling about abandoned places, especially when nature decides to reclaim them. Australian photographer Emma McEvoy traveled to one such place in 2015: Kolmanskop, a ghost town in Namibia's Namib Desert that's been slowly swallowed by sand for over half a century.
Her project, 'Sand Castles,' captures the eerie beauty of what happens when human ambition meets the unstoppable force of the desert. The photos are surreal, almost dreamlike, showing rooms where sand dunes rise like frozen waves against peeling wallpaper and broken windows.
What makes McEvoy's work so striking is the contrast she captures. From the outside, the buildings blend into the barren landscape, unremarkable and forgotten. But step inside, and you're met with something haunting: vibrant, colorful wallpaper fading under layers of sand, light streaming through cracks in ways that feel almost intentional.
"The wallpaper is different in each room, and the contrast of these incredibly colorful, old, peeling wallpapers and the sand is so surreal," McEvoy told Tech Insider.
It's a visual collision of human history and natural persistence, and the result is nothing short of mesmerizing. Truly, the desert doesn't destroy with violence; it simply waits, patient and relentless, until everything returns to sand.
Keep scrolling to see the photos and learn about the ghost town behind them.
1. The walls are fading, but the sand is winning
Emma Mcevoy2. Looks like the desert signed the final eviction notice
Emma Mcevoy3. When the desert wants in, nothing stops it
Emma Mcevoy
Kolmanskop wasn't always a graveyard of sand-filled ruins. In the early 1900s, it was founded by Germans after railway worker Zacherias Lewala discovered diamonds while clearing train tracks in 1908.
He showed them to his supervisor, August Stauch, a former De Beers employee, and the discovery sparked a diamond rush. Hundreds of miners flooded the area, and Kolmanskop was built practically overnight to support them.
According to the BBC, the town was once "one of the wealthiest" in the world. It had a hospital with the very first X-ray unit in the southern hemisphere, a ballroom, a casino, and even a bowling alley.
In 1912, Kolmanskop produced a million carats of diamonds, roughly 12% of the world's total. "In the town's heyday, the precious stones were so easy to find that they could be picked out of the sand. Workers, holding jam jars, would crawl on hands and knees, filling them with diamonds," the BBC writes.
4. This room looks halfway buried and still sinking
Emma Mcevoy
5. She looks like she just stepped into a dream made of dunes and dust
Emma Mcevoy
6. The red walls are stubborn, but the sand clearly won this fight
Emma Mcevoy
7. The desert didn’t knock, it just walked straight through this room
Emma Mcevoy
Unfortunately, the boom didn't last. By the 1930s, local resources were mostly exhausted. New diamond deposits were found further south, near Namibia's border with South Africa, and people moved on.
The very last families abandoned Kolmanskop in 1956. Now, the town sits in a restricted zone controlled by the Namdeb Diamond Corporation, jointly owned by De Beers and the Namibian government. It's become a major tourist and photographer destination.
When McEvoy visited in 2015, she tried to get a permit but found the office closed. So she "had to sneak in to capture the images in the beautiful golden light at dawn and dusk all on my own," she told Tech Insider.
She loved "the feeling of having the entire town" to herself and even took self-portraits dancing in a dress among the ruins. "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.
8. Room to room, the desert doesn’t even pause at open doors
Emma Mcevoy
9. The sand came in soft this time, just brushing the floors
Emma Mcevoy
Later, McEvoy filled an abandoned home in Australia with tons of sand to create a thematic gallery featuring her Kolmanskop photos.
"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," she said.
According to McEvoy's website, her work explores themes "surrounding the duality of human nature, our relationship to the environment, and the feminine condition."
She adds that she has a "strong passion" for music photography and is happiest when photographing in nature.
10. A crooked wave of sand pushes past a half-broken door still trying to stand guard
Emma Mcevoy
11. A towering drift presses through the doorway as the house slowly disappears inside it
Emma Mcevoy
12. Sand piled deep against red and white walls like a buried time capsule
Emma Mcevoy
13. The door sits half buried as sand piles tight against the corner wall
Emma Mcevoy
14. That pile lifted her right out of the frame
Emma Mcevoy
15. A thick sand pile forced its way through the doorway
Emma Mcevoy
16. Sunbeams paint stripes across the sand piling inside
Emma Mcevoy
17. Desert sand flows through the door like a slow, unstoppable tide
Emma Mcevoy
18. Sand collects across the room, stacking up in the corner where the walls meet
Emma Mcevoy
19. Sand rises almost to the doorframe, nearly sealing the room shut
Emma Mcevoy
20. A calm pose in a white dress at the doorway while the desert quietly takes over inside
Emma Mcevoy
21. The door is barely hanging on under all that sand
Emma Mcevoy
Emma McEvoy's 'Sand Castles' series shows that nothing humans build is truly permanent.
Kolmanskop was once one of the wealthiest towns on Earth, and now it's a monument to what happens when nature decides to take back what was always hers.
But in that slow, inevitable reclaiming, there's a strange kind of beauty. The sand doesn't destroy, it transforms.
Which photo struck you the most? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
