Another fine mess

Urban exploration photographer Gina Soden talks to Peter Dench about balancing art and ethics, navigating decay with dignity, and her rise to fine-art success

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Gina Soden (b. 1985) is a British fine-art photographer known for her distinctive images of abandoned buildings across Europe. With a background in portraiture and a passion for travel, she began exploring derelict spaces in 2009 and has since developed a signature style that combines painterly composition with rigorous UrbEx discipline. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at the Royal Academy, leading galleries across the UK and Europe, and major US and European art fairs. Her work is held in both private collections and in nine Soho House collections worldwide. Soden lives in the UK and continues to produce limited edition series from carefully researched locations, balancing the thrill of exploration with the ethics of preservation.

Soden’s images have a hushed grandeur - rich in detail but devoid of noise. The decay is never chaotic; instead, it’s meticulously framed, often symmetrically, with the eye guided toward vanishing points, grand staircases or fractured light. Colours are soft yet saturated, with a baroque palette of mould greens, dust pinks and oxidised ochres. Surfaces bloom with patina and peeling paint, but the overall effect is not one of ruin porn - it's reverence. There's a deliberate stillness to her work that evokes 19th-century Romantic painting as much as 21st-century photography. She captures the moment just before entropy tips into erasure — when the past hasn’t quite let go.

Here, Gina reveals the allure and stories behind some of her most daring esc-art-pades.

Blue Orphanage

This building was built in the late 1800s and was a former family home, boarding school, orphanage, conference centre. It took me a 40-minute walk through the woods, avoiding the local farmer with a shotgun, a dodgy climb through a window, avoiding falling through rotten floorboards to get this shot, and it was worth every second. Photographed using a 24mm shift lens.

Hotel Bedding