Director and photographer Matthew Thorne documents the South Australian Opal mining town of Andamooka. Millennia ago it was an ocean and while aquatic dinosaur fossils can still be found there, today the ancient desert landscape is home to the last of Australia’s frontiersmen. Shot during a 6-month stint on a separate film project in town, the series delves into the narrative depths of frontier life. As Thorne states:

“The land is a stolen land, and a cursed land — and the magic of that wound has a unique way of working on the people that are born there new, and those who came before.”

See more images from “The Sand That Ate The Sea” below. Each week our members share their work with us and we highlight the best of these submissions as Editors’ Picks. If you have work to share, you can learn more about becoming a member.