Namaqualand is generally considered to be a peripheral part of South Africa. It is inhabited by a small, highly scattered rural population depending upon a few towns and mining centres for services and administrative facilities. Sophia Klaase’s home village of Paulshoek in Namaqualand’s communal area of Leliefontein originated as an outpost for livestock herders in the early 20th century and now consists of about one hundred households. It is reached by way of a rough gravel road, 52 kilometres from Garies, the closest town. Paulshoek lies on the isolated eastern edge of the Kamiesberg massif, adjacent to the vast commercial sheep farms of Bushmanland and the nuclear waste dump of Vaalputs. The village seems stranded in the landscape and in time due to the vestiges of its history within a marginalised ‘Coloured Reserve’. Some changes have taken place since 1994: housing has been upgraded, electricity and running water have come to all households and the phone service has improved. Even so, substantial socio-economic transformation seems a distant dream. Unemployment remains extremely high at over 75%, and those who find work often receive very low wages. In common with many of South Africa’s communal areas, State welfare in the form of social grants is the main source of income. Illness due to limited health services, poverty and the HIV/AIDS pandemic are ever-present realities among the young and the old. In spite of the isolation and lack of opportunities, the residents of Paulshoek manage to create a sense of the extraordinary as portrayed in Sophia Klaase’s visual archive of village life.