German photographer Menno Aden turns familiar interior spaces into alien planes, simply by photographing them from above. Taking the perspective of a surveillance camera, a fly on the wall, or maybe even a guardian angel, Aden turns the spaces we inhabit into abstract fields of shape and color.
Classrooms, operating rooms and closets stores become flattened, symmetrical compositions removed from all human contact. To achieve that clinical gaze Aden took multiple photographs of the same room by setting up a camera on various monopods and tripods, before digitally merging them into a single image.
There is the creepy sense of voyeurism stemming from this fictitious perspective, although we are not quite sure what we are surveying. The collection, especially the corner shop, reminds us of Andreas Gursky's work in their ability to portray a camera's perspective as something objective, strange, mechanical and utterly inhuman. We no longer see candy in a store, but a dizzying tower of hyper-saturated hues that, between the sugary colors and topsy-turvy view, makes our stomachs turn. Art is all about changing the way we see the banal spaces and places we inhabit, and what better way to do that then by looking at them from above?
Thanks, Design Mom, for showing turning our worlds upside down, at least for a few minutes. Check out Aden's works below. Warning: They may give you vertigo.
