This image by German photographer Menno Aden offers a view down from the ceiling onto an empty pharmaceutical laboratory.
Menno Aden produced Lab as part of an ongoing project to document interiors from unconventional viewpoints. Previously he's captured domestic interiors and public places, but this latest photograph focuses on the biological laboratory of a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland.
There are no people in the shot, but the cluttered desktops reveal some of the activities that take place inside the space.
"Through the steep top-view the deserted laboratory appears as a model," said Aden. "As if the ceiling was removed, architectural structures and human traces of modern bio-laboratories become visible."
To create a flattened bird's-eye view, the photographer took over 1000 shots from different places on the laboratory ceiling, then collaged 600 of them together to remove perspective distortions.
It took two days to take all of the photographs, followed by three months of computer editing to create a single composite image.
Adden told Dezeen he believes this kind of image production provides a more accurate representation of reality than traditional photography.
"Interestingly photographs are still associated with 'truth' and 'reality', not only by consumers but also by many professional photographers who boast not to use Photoshop to distort authenticity," he said.
"In my photographic work this situation is indeed exactly vice versa: only the digital image processing allows the representation of a reality," he continued. "Like a radiograph, it sometimes requires special techniques to look 'behind the curtain' and come a bit closer to the truth."
