THE OCCUPANT

Kolmanskop was a diamond town once, built by German prospectors in the middle of the Namib Desert and abandoned when the diamonds ran out. For almost a century, the desert has been reclaiming it room by room, sand pouring through windows and beneath doors until inside and outside become difficult to separate. Tourists arrive every morning. By afternoon, the town is empty again. Yet something returns every day: light. This series follows its passage through the abandoned architecture. It begins as a grid of shadows cast across a bare wall, then gathers into a single beam before breaking apart into colour as it crosses sand-filled rooms where desert and interior have become one. It ends before dawn, with a lone window glowing warm against the darkness. For a brief moment, someone is there, opening the town before the first visitors arrive. The Germans left almost a century ago. The desert stayed. And light became Kolmanskop’s last occupant, perhaps the closest thing this abandoned town still has to a home.