1 000 WORDS
When words fail. Photo essays from the frontline of climate collapse.
16 Feb 2025
Tending the dead
The maiden’s quiver tree is the Cinderella of three tree aloe sister species that grace the Richtersveld’s gravelly moonscape. Maybe it’s outshone by the towering charisma of the giant and common quiver trees— it’s stocky and stout — but its future is as uncertain as its siblings’, as the desert’s climate ratchets up from hellishly hot to unbearable.
30 April 2025
Wind-blown sand scouring life off a Southern African landscape
A nasty wind rips across Cornell’s Kop one afternoon in the spring of 2024, driving emeritus professor Timm Hoffman and his team to abandon the hilly study site a few clicks west of the |Ai-|Ais Richtersveld Transfrontier Park that straddles the South Africa-Namibia border along the Orange River.
First published in Mongabay.
14 May 2025 (… coming soon to the Daily Maverick)
Agent Orange
The foothills of south-western Lesotho are like a burn victim who has barely survived their injuries. It’s as if they’ve been doused with napalm. The once plump, glowing skin of soil and grass is reduced to scar tissue, drum-tight over the jutting sandstone bones beneath. The wound is trying to heal, but the keloid scars of erosion gullies can’t close.