Sandhouse Ocean Room
{"Image ImageWidth": "1050", "Image ImageLength": "706", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image ImageDescription": "Sand House Series, The Ocean Room. Kolmanskop, near Luderitz, Namibia, 2001:  I stumbled upon Kolmanskop, an abandoned mining town near Luderitz while working on a story about diamonds for the National Geographic Magazine. \n\nIn 1908, Namibia was still part of German West Africa.\u00a0 A railroad worker was sweeping sand off a stretch of the rail that hugs the coast and where the Namib Desert meets the sea. He picked up a stone that turned out to be a diamond. This single event transformed a country and triggered a rush of prospectors. \n\nWorkers literally crawled across the desert, shoulder-to -shoulder harvesting stones in concentrations so rich that, in six years, they found more than 4.6 million carats of diamonds. The German government declared a 290 mille long strip of coastal of land, the \"Sperrgebiet,\" (the Forbidden Zone) where prospecting was forbidden.  \n\nLively mining towns sprung up overnight, littering the desert with housing, casinos and theaters. By the 1930s, new technology had begun to eliminate jobs: machines were being used to mine coastal sands. Workers returned to Germany and wind-driven sands of the Namib swept into the abandoned towns, filling the tidy workers' rooms, and scouring brightly painted walls into dreamscapes.\n\n(Photo by Cary Wolinsky, Aurora Photos)", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "150", "Image YResolution": "150", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Macintosh)", "Image DateTime": "2014:03:29 19:19:54", "Image Artist": "Cary Wolinsky", "Image Copyright": "Copyright Cary Wolinsky 2001", "Image ExifOffset": "1612", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1762", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7403", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "900", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "605"}