The German Artist captures from Above the Claustrophobic Effects of Gentrification.
Tight spaces, chaotic life.
Menno Aden is a photographer from Weener, a small town in north-west Germany, who has lived in Berlin since 2001.
His unconventional perspective explores from above the living space and interiors of the homes he has visited during his life in the German Capital.
Although, to all intents and purposes, Aden’s is interior photography, his work has nothing to do with architecture and design, although he is influenced by them stylistically.
Menno is more interested in the organization of spaces and the people who inhabit them.
In his shots, one does not see large, luxurious and clean rooms, as in the trade magazines; rather, living solutions that give a sense of claustrophobia, where space is dilated thanks to perspective and, like in an aquarium, the people who inhabit it must adapt to its interior, compressing themselves.
His photographic structure has a symmetrically perfect composition, organized in grids and panels, to give a sense of unimpeachable two-dimensionality; yet the chaos within his shots hints at the imperfection of the system that governs contemporary life in big cities.
The flats visited by Menno Aden contain everything within them, in very few square meters: shower cubicles in the kitchen, toilets too close to the bed.
Inhospitable effects of gentrification and rising rents in big cities, which have particularly affected Berlin in the last 10 years. Some of the shots were taken in flats occupied by squatters, a phenomenon that was widespread just after the fall of the wall until the mid-1990s before housing speculation took its course.
The notion of surveillance is systematically interpreted by the artist to allude to the voyeuristic impulse of society that wishes to see, like a non-participating anthropologist, the disturbing consequences of the contemporary era.
After the Bird’s Eye project, Aden opened up to other, more airy and orderly spaces, such as large offices and warehouses, flats and garages.
