Danish photographer Alastair Philip Wiper has spent over a decade documenting the surprising aesthetic appeal found within massive industrial facilities around the world. His work, featured in the 2020 photobook "Unintended Beauty," showcases approximately 100 locations ranging from South Korean shipyards to American sex doll factories, revealing an unexpected visual poetry in the world's most utilitarian spaces.
Wiper's journey into industrial photography began in 2007 when he first picked up a camera while working as a graphic designer for a Copenhagen fashion company. Originally a philosophy and politics graduate who had worked as a chef, he volunteered to photograph lookbooks when the company needed a photographer. "I knew I wanted to make a living out of photography, but fashion photography didn't interest me and portrait or street photography wasn't going to make me any money," Wiper explains.
His artistic direction changed dramatically after discovering the work of mid-20th century industrial photographers Wolfgang Sievers and Maurice Broomfield. These photographers captured post-war industrial landscapes with geometric precision, illuminating human stories against increasingly mechanized backdrops. "Before that, I didn't have a specific interest in industry, engineering or science, but as soon as I began shooting these kinds of places I became completely fascinated," Wiper says. "I thought I could travel and get access to places people don't get to see."
Wiper's distinctive approach stems from what he describes as a "childlike way of looking at things." Rather than immediately categorizing industrial equipment by function, his first reaction is often "what the hell is that, it looks like a monster!" This perspective allows his imagination to run wild, finding beauty in structures that might otherwise appear purely functional or even ugly.
Among his most striking images is the Adidas shoe factory in Indonesia, where 10,000 workers produce 75,000 pairs of shoes daily—22 million annually. The building photographed specifically manufactures Adidas Superstars, showcasing the massive scale of modern footwear production. Another captivating subject is RealDoll's sex doll workshop in the United States, where fully customizable dolls averaging $7,500 each are crafted with options for everything from nipples to lips to vaginal specifications. The company has recently introduced robotic heads, adding an additional $8,000 to the cost.
Wiper's lens has also captured Aurora Nordic's medicinal cannabis greenhouse in Denmark, operated by Mads Pedersen, a third-generation tomato grower who owns Scandinavia's largest tomato-growing empire. Around 2015, Pedersen realized his infrastructure and expertise could be applied to cannabis cultivation, leading him to construct a 60,000-square-meter facility—the largest in Europe.
The Playmobil factory in Malta presents another fascinating industrial landscape, where "The Octopus"—a machine that propels plastic pellets throughout the facility—creates an almost alien environment. The German company has produced all its figures on this Mediterranean island since 1976, with over 3 billion figures manufactured there. Today, 1,300 people work in Malta's second-largest factory, operating 270 injection-molding machines that create up to 100 million figures annually.
Wiper's portfolio extends to cutting-edge scientific facilities, including France's Odeillo Solar Furnace, where 9,600 mirrors concentrate the sun's energy to create extremely high temperatures. Built in 1970, this facility continues to serve space agencies like NASA and the European Space Agency for testing materials under extreme conditions. At CERN in Switzerland, just a short distance from Geneva airport, Wiper photographed a plywood mock-up of part of the ATLAS Detector—the largest of seven detectors on the Large Hadron Collider.
Other remarkable locations include Denmark's Technical University Radio Anechoic Chamber, which has operated since 1967 testing microwave antennas for satellites and mobile networks. The facility's distinctive foam spikes, filled with carbon and iron, absorb radio waves to minimize reflections. Wiper also documented Danish Crown's Horsens Slaughterhouse, which processes approximately 100,000 pigs weekly, making it one of the world's largest facilities of its kind and employing 1,420 people.
Perhaps most impressive is the Maersk Triple E container ship under construction at South Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering facility. When completed, this vessel was the world's largest container ship, with capacity for 18,000 containers—enough space to transport 864 million bananas. This image serves as the lead photograph for Wiper's collection, symbolizing the monumental scale of 21st-century industry.
Through his work, Wiper has successfully transformed industrial photography from mere documentation into fine art, finding companies willing to hire him to photograph their factories while granting creative freedom to create artwork from these utilitarian spaces. His images challenge viewers to see beauty in the sublime structures that define our modern industrial age, revealing the unexpected aesthetics that emerge from humanity's largest-scale manufacturing and scientific endeavors.
