Skeleton Coast Shipwreck — Eduard Bohlen Aerial
41,895.50 ¥
The Eduard Bohlen shipwreck aerial photograph — the 1909 German cargo vessel now 500 metres inland from the current Namibian coastline, half-buried in desert sand, surrounded by shifting orange dunes encroaching from the east.
Description
The Eduard Bohlen ran aground on the Skeleton Coast of German South-West Africa in 1909 — stranded on the shallows that then marked the coastline. Over the subsequent century, coastal sand accretion has moved the waterline 500 metres to the west, leaving the wreck half-buried in the Namib Desert far from the current ocean. The aerial perspective communicates this geological absurdity most clearly: the rusted hull emerging from orange desert sand, the current Atlantic coastline visible in the top of the frame, the intervening 500 metres of sand dune between the vessel and the water it once sailed. This image was made from a light aircraft at 300 metres altitude in the late afternoon when the low sun illuminates the wreck’s rust-orange against the darker orange dune sand at maximum contrast. The wreck’s hull geometry — still legible as a ship despite decades of partial burial — is the frame’s central element.
