PRESS/ARTIST STATEMENT
Menno van der Meulen is a Berlin-based photographer documenting BDSM culture, nightlife, porn industry intimacy and power, without censorship.
PRESS/ARTIST STATEMENT
Artist Statement
My work explores intimacy, vulnerability, and the spaces where people express freedom — often within queer and fetish communities.
Through portraiture and documentary photography, I investigate the fragile balance between exposure and respect, body and gaze, self and other.
The images are not about provocation but presence — a quiet confrontation with what it means to be seen, to consent, and to desire.
I’m drawn to people who inhabit their truth without apology, whose gestures carry both resistance and tenderness.
This work is less about the erotic than about connection — the tension between safety and risk, boundaries and surrender, distance and trust.
Bio (Short – 1 sentence)
Menno van der Meulen is a Dutch photographer based in Berlin, exploring intimacy, consent, and the politics of desire.
Bio (Medium – 1 paragraph)
Menno van der Meulen (b. NL) works across portraiture, performance, and documentary photography.
Now based in Berlin, his practice examines the emotional and political dimensions of sexuality — particularly within queer and BDSM subcultures.
His work questions how intimacy and visibility coexist, creating a visual language that is both vulnerable and confrontational.
Bio (Full – for press use)
Menno van der Meulen’s photographic practice examines the intersection of intimacy, representation, and consent.
Working primarily in Berlin’s queer and fetish nightlife, his images investigate how desire and identity are performed, witnessed, and reclaimed.
Van der Meulen’s portraits and documentary series challenge the gaze — shifting it from voyeurism toward empathy, agency,
and truth. His subjects are collaborators rather than objects, participants who shape the work through dialogue and trust.
This approach transforms moments of exposure into acts of self-definition, revealing the quiet power of bodies that refuse silence.
By framing desire as a site of cultural meaning — not just erotic charge — his work connects personal vulnerability with social resistance.
Van der Meulen’s photography has been featured in independent publications and exhibitions exploring contemporary representations of intimacy, sexuality, and queer identity.