#i don't often get to use my decade of portrait experience

[littlefingies]

Look at the lighting on their faces in this scene. They look amazing, and part of that is how they're lit.

This is classic portrait lighting. It's soft but directional. Look at the triangle of light on Ed's right cheek. Look at the shadow under Stede's jaw. See how the light is reflected in their eyes? See how the light is softly hitting their faces? How the lighting is just a bit cool, so the warmest tones come from their faces?

[salarta]

Time for my first topical post on Tumblr involving Polaris and X-Men/Marvel in a long while! To get it started, I've had "this song"Wait For It" from Hamilton in mind since this morning, and I'll be getting to why under the cut.

I learned about Polaris in 2009. Not from a comic, or a cartoon, or a show, but from just randomly stumbling upon her with the Marvel wikia.

Imagine learning this awesome character exists that you never knew about, after literally decades alive, purely by chance. And seeing how little respect people at Marvel have for her, and how poorly she's been depicted for the most part as compared to her actual potential.

Many people aware of Lorna nowadays know of her thanks to the Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon, or thanks to Gifted, or appearing in video games, or winning the X-Men vote. But back when I learned of her, she had none of those things. She was just appearing in the WatXM cartoon, but it's been kind of a slow burn for most people to learn about and watch that.

My point is this: Lorna's gains in all these respects were different kinds of battles.

Fans needed to push for Lorna to appear in video games. Fans needed to draw attention to Lorna on Gifted. Fans needed to vote for Lorna for the X-Men vote and argue in her favor.

And all the while, fans needed to push back against poor treatment and poor attitudes toward her by people working on the comics.

A decade ago, Tom Brevoort tried to argue that Lorna "couldn't" be Magneto's daughter, and misused his power as editor on the Avengers books to exclude her from Magnus family matters on those books and replace her with other characters. This included having a House of M portrait redrawn in Children's Crusade to replace her from a rando, leaving Lorna out of Axis and having a corrupted Wanda claim Magneto "has no kids" after the forced retcon on the twins being his kids, and trying to replace Lorna as Wanda and Pietro's sister by introducing another color-coded character.

Jordan White kept misusing his power to try and force his nostalgia for Havolaris and for 90s X-Factor onto Lorna. Everywhere Lorna showed up, Havok was forced into her affairs one way or another. This went so far as to have a bubble in Prisoners of X depicting 90s Lorna and Havok kissing as one of her memories, but NO bubbles showing her experience on Genosha, whether as someone who supported it or someone who survived its genocide.

Yet, Polaris fandom is still here. We're still fully aware of her REAL potential, and still pushing damn hard to see it realized, in spite of people who work on the comics thinking she doesn't deserve good things. Whether it's Brevoort essentially saying she doesn't deserve to be Magneto's daughter and the twins' sister, or White saying she doesn't deserve to be a star or have meaningful stuff done for her while trying to dismiss her winning the X-Men vote as "oh she only won cause she was on Gifted."

And that's the connection to "Wait For It."

Getting good things for Lorna is an uphill climb. We're facing decades of poor treatment, and ignorant nostalgia for that poor treatment by editors who don't care about good work and potential, just whatever personally pleases them. People with big egos who think they don't have to try to be better and offer better.

Getting these good things very often requires being confrontational. Saying things people don't want said, and saying them in uncivil ways. And I'm not saying every occasion merits that approach, cause that would be absurd. You use different tools for different jobs.

But, in the end, you can't just play nice all the time either. Doing that gives the impression that Lorna really doesn't matter, because if she did, wouldn't she have fans willing to fight for her? Who want better than the crumbs they get every so often by assholes just to appease them?

Fact of matters is, as fans we take out of necessity, because certain assholes force us into a position where we must. Where that's the ONLY path open toward positive change. Where changing the game from their terms to ours is part of getting there.

And in spite of efforts to undermine fandom, we keep winning anyway.

But it takes time. Make no mistake that making good things happen for Lorna is not an overnight deal. We're not dealing with a blank slate of attitudes where just hyping up the character is enough. We're confronted "given wisdom" and entrenched attitudes that are very negative toward her.

We're challenging the perceived status quo. That's going to rile more than a few feathers. People like the comforts of status quo, especially as they get older and existential dread starts to creep in. The options in dealing with those people are either give up or challenge them. And if we're really fans, we'll challenge what they think is right to get them to open their minds to Lorna's real potential and what she really has to offer.

The end goal is something we work toward, but satisfaction of actually getting it is something we have to wait for along the way.

[soundsfaebutokay]

So I've recc'd this video before, but it deserves its own post because it's one of my favorite things on youtube. It's a Tedx Talk by comics writer, editor, and journalist Jay Edidin, and I really think that it will connect with a lot of people here.

If you live and breathe stories of all kinds, you might like this.

If you care about media representation, you might like this.

If you're neurodivergent, you might like this.

If you're interested in a gender transition story that veers from the norm, you might like this.

If you love the original Leverage and especially Parker, and understand how important it is that a character like her exists, you will definitely like this.

Transcript below the cut:

You Are Here: The Cartography of Stories

by Jay Edidin

I am autistic. And what this means in practice is that there are some things that are easier for me than they are for most people, and a great many things that are somewhat harder, and these affect my life in more or less overt ways. As it goes, I'm pretty lucky. I've been able to build a career around special interests and granular obsession. My main gig at the moment is explaining superhero comics continuity and publishing history for which work I am somehow paid in actual legal currency—which is both a triumph of the frivolous in an era of the frantically pragmatic, and a job that's really singularly suited to my strengths and also to my idiosyncrasies.

I like comics. I like stories in general, because they make sense to me in ways that the rest of the world and my own mind often don't. Self-knowledge is not an intuitive thing for me. What sense of self I have, I've built gradually and laboriously and mostly through long-term pattern recognition. For decades, I didn't even really have a self-image. If you'd asked me to draw myself, I would eventually have given you a pair of glasses and maybe a very messy scribble of hair, and that would've been about it. But what I do know—backwards, forwards, and in pretty much every way that matters—are stories. I know how they work. I understand their language, their complex inner clockwork, and I can use those things to extrapolate a sort of external compass that picks up where my internal one falls short. Stories—their forms, their structure, the sense of order inherent to them—give me the means to navigate what otherwise, at least for me, would be an impassable storm of unparsable data. Or stories are a periscope, angled to access the parts of myself I can't intuitively see. Or stories are a series of mirrors by which I can assemble a composite sketch of an identity I rarely recognize whole...which is how I worked out that I was transgender, in my early thirties, by way of a television show.

This is my story. And it's about narrative cartography, and representation, and why those things matter. It's about autism and it's about gender and it's about how they intersect. And it's about the kinds of people we know how to see, and the kinds of people we don't. It's not the kind of story that gets told a lot, you might hear a lot, because the narrative around gender transition and dysphoria in our culture is really, really prescriptive. It's basically the story of the kid who has known for their whole life that they're this and not that, and that story demands the kind of intuitive self-knowledge that I can't really do, and a kind of relationship to gender that I don't really have—which is part of why it took me so long to figure my own stuff out.

So, to what extent this story, my story has a beginning, it begins early in 2014 when I published an essay titled, "I See Your Value Now: Asperger's and the Art of Allegory." And it explored, among other things, the ways that I use narrative and narrative structures to navigate real life. And it got picked up in a number of fairly prominent places that got linked, and I casually followed the ensuing discussion. And I was surprised to discover that readers were fairly consistently assuming I was a man. Now, that in itself wasn't a new experience for me, even though at the time I was writing under a very unambiguously female byline. It had happened in the letter columns of comics I'd edited. It had happened when a parody Twitter account I'd created went viral. When I was on staff at Wired, I budgeted for fancy scotch by putting a dollar in a box every time a reader responded in a way that made it clear they were assuming I was a man in response to an article where my name was clearly visible, and then I had to stop doing that because it happened so often I couldn't afford to keep it up. But in all of those cases, the context, you know, the reasons were pretty obvious. The fields I'd worked in, the beats I covered, they were places where women had had to fight disproportionally hard for visibility and recognition. We live in a culture that assumes a male default, so given a neutral voice and a character limit, most readers will assume a male author.

But this was different, because this wasn't just a book I'd edited, it wasn't a story I'd reported—it was me, it was my story. And it made me uncomfortable, got under my skin in ways that the other stuff really hadn't. And so I did what I do when that happens, and I tried to sort of reverse-engineer it to look at the conclusions and peel them back to see the narratives behind them and the stories that made them tick. And I started this, I started this by going back to the text of the essay, and you know, examining it every way I could think of: looking at craft, looking at content. And in doing so, I was surprised to realize that while I had written about a number of characters with whom I identified closely, that every single one of those characters I'd written about was male. And that surprised me even more than the responses to the essay had, because I've spent my career writing and talking and thinking about gender and representation in popular media. In 2014, I'd been the feminist gadfly of an editorial department and multiple mastheads. I'd been a founding board member of an organization that existed to advocate for more and better representation of women and girls in comics characters and creators. And most of my favorite characters, the ones I'd actively seek out and follow, were women. Just not, apparently, the characters I saw myself in.

Now I still didn't realize it was me at this point. Remember: self-knowledge, not very intuitive for me. And while I had spent a lot of time thinking about gender, I'd never really bothered to think much about my own. I knew academically that the way other people read and interpreted my gender affected and had influenced a lifetime of social and professional interactions, and that those in turn had informed the person I'd grown up into during that time. But I really believed, like I just sort of had in the back of my head, that if you peeled away all of that social conditioning, you'd basically end up with what I got when I tried to draw a self-portrait. So: a pair of glasses, messy scribble of hair, and in this case, maybe also some very strong opinions about the X-Men. I mean, I knew something was off. I'd always known something was off, that my relationship to gender was messy and uncomfortable, but gender itself struck me as messy and uncomfortable, and it had never been a large enough part of how I defined myself to really feel like something that merited further study, and I had deadlines, and...so it was always on the back burner. So, I looked, I looked at what I had, at this improbable group of exclusively male characters. And I looked and I figured that if this wasn't me, then it had to be a result of the stories I had access to, to choose from, and the entertainment landscape I was looking at. And the funny thing is, I wasn't wrong, exactly. I just wasn't right either.

See, the characters I'd written about had one other significant trait in common aside from their gender, which is that they were all more or less explicitly, more or less heavily coded as autistic. And I thought, "Ah, yes. This explains it. This is under representation in fiction echoing under representation in life and vice versa." Because the characteristics that I'd honed in on, that I particularly identified with in these guys, were things like emotional unavailability and social awkwardness and granular obsession, and all of those are characteristics that are seen as unsympathetic and therefore unmarketable in female characters. Which is also why readers were assuming that I was a man.

Because, you see, here's the thing. I'm not the only one who uses stories to navigate the world. I'm just a little more deliberate about it. For humans, stories formed the bridge between data and understanding. They're where we look when we need to contextualize something new, or to recognize something we're pretty sure we've seen before. They're how we identify ourselves; they're how we locate ourselves and each other in the larger world. There were no fictional women like me; there weren't representations of women like me in media, and so readers were primed not to recognize women like me in real life either.

Now by this point, I had started writing a follow-up essay, and this one was also about autism and narratives, but specifically focused on how they intersected with gender and representation in media. And in context of this essay, I went about looking to see if I could find even one female character who had that cluster of traits I'd been looking for, and I was asking around in autistic communities. And I got a few more or less useful one-off suggestions, and some really, really splendid arguments about semantics and standards, and um...then I got one answer over and over and over in community after community after community. "Leverage," people told me. "You have to watch Leverage."

So I watched Leverage. Leverage is five seasons of ensemble heist drama. It's about a team of very skilled con artists who take down corrupt and powerful plutocrats and the like, and it's a lot of fun, and it's very clever, and it's clever enough that it doesn't really matter that it's pretty formulaic, and I enjoyed it a lot. But what's most important, what Leverage has is Parker.

Parker is a master thief, and she is the best of the best of the best in ways that all of Leverage's characters are the best of the best. And superficially, she looks like the kind of woman you see on TV. So she's young, and she's slender, and she's blonde, and she's attractive but in a sort of approachable way. And all of that familiarity is brilliant misdirection, because the thing is, there are no other women like Parker on TV. Because Parker—even if it's never explicitly stated in the show—Parker is coded incredibly clearly as autistic. Parker is socially awkward. Her speech tends to have limited inflection; what inflection it does have is repetitive and sounds rehearsed a lot of the time. She's not emotionally literate; she struggles with it, and the social skills she develops over the series, she learns by rote, like they're just another grift. When she's not scaling skyscrapers or cartwheeling through laser grids, she wears her body like an ill-fitting suit. Parker moves like me. And Parker, Parker was a revelation—she was a revolution unto herself. In a media landscape where unempathetic women usually exist to either be punished or "loved whole," Parker got to play the crabby savant. And she wasn't emotionally intuitive but it was never ever played as the product of abuse or trauma even though she had survived both of those—it was just part of her, as much as were her hands or her eyes. And she had a genuine character arc. My god, she had a genuine romantic arc, even. And none of that required her to turn into anything other than what she was. And in Parker I recognized a thousand tics and details of my life and my personality...but. I didn't recognize myself.

Why? What difference was there in Parker, you know, between Parker and the other characters I'd written about? Those characters, they'd spanned ethnicities and backgrounds and different media and appearances and the only other characteristic they all had in common was their gender. So that was where I started to look next, and I thought, "Well, okay, maybe, maybe it's masculinity. Maybe if Parker were less feminine, she'd click with me the way those other characters had." So then I tried to imagine a Parker with short hair, who's explicitly butch, and...nothing. So okay, I extended it in what seems like the only logical direction to extend it. I said, "Well, if it's not masculinity, what if it's actual maleness? What if Parker were a man?" Ah. Yeah.

In the end, everything changed, and nothing changed, which is often the way that it goes for me. Add a landmark, no matter how slight, and the map is irrevocably altered. Add a landmark, and paths that were invisible before open wide. Add a landmark, and you may not have moved, but suddenly you know where you are and where you can go.

I wasn't going to tell this story when I started planning this talk. I was gonna tell a similar story, it was about stories, like this is, about narratives and the ways that they influence our culture and vice versa. And it centered around a group of women at NASA who had basically rewritten the narrative around space exploration, and it was a lot more fun, and I still think it was more interesting. But it's also a story you can probably work out for yourselves. In fact it's a story some of you probably have, if you follow that kind of thing, which you probably do given that you're here. And this is a story, my story is not a story that I like to tell. It's not a fun story to talk about because it's very personal and I am a very private person. And it's not universal. And it's not always relatable, and it's definitely not aspirational. And it's not the kind of story that you tend to encounter unless you're already part of it...which is why I'm telling it now. Because the thing is, I'm not the only person who uses stories to parse the world and navigate it. I'm just a little more deliberate. Because I'm tired of having to rely on composite sketches.

Open your maps. Add a landmark. Reroute accordingly.

[obligatorilypretentious]

queer classic book recs!!

Image description under the cut! Please tell me if I did something wrong and I will gladly change it!

The other recs will be in the reblog!

[Each slide excluding the title screen includes 3 photos relating to the book, largely alternative covers of each in a small grid format.]

Slide One: In the center is a box with interior text reading "13 lgbtq classics and 1 “modern” classic. Recs in the comments welcome!" The top left corner includes an image of a calligraphy quill. Underneath this is text that reads "Disclaimer! The beginning of this list is.. Very White, but don't worry it gets more diverse as the books get more recent!!" In the top right corner is a text box reading "Look up trigger warnings or I’ll steal your gender! … or give it back!!" under this is a picture of an open book displayed in the foreground and another stack of books in the background.

Slide Two: Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.

1872

Lesbian/wlw but written by a man

vampires!

“Following a near-fatal carriage collision, the beautiful young Carmilla is taken in by the narrator Laura and her father.”

While this book plays into the stereotype of the “monteress, seductive lesbian,” it is one of the oldest and most famous classical texts depicting a lesbian relationship. Toxic AF.

Slide Three: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

1890

not explicitly queer (subtext)

but gay (mlm) tho

“Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence.”

This book contains Anti-semitism, Racism, Sexism and is honestly a product of its time. Oscar Wilde is certainly a character.

Slide Four: Orlando by Virginia Woolf

1928

sapphic/gender exploration

“The novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost.”

Main Character is racist and anti-Semitic. While her writing is incredibly important and impactful as a queer figure, she will always be white before she is queer.

Slide Five: The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

1928

lesbian/wlw

originally banned

“Stephen is an ideal child of aristocratic parents—a fencer, a horse rider, and a keen scholar. Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer, and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions.”

This book contains racism, use of the N-word, sexism, homophobia & lots of outdated ideas in general.

Slide Six: Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

1956

gay/mlm

“In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.”

OMG! A classic on this list in which I can't find any evidence of racism or antisemitism! /srs. Imagine that- it's almost like POC classical authors are important to teach about! /hj

Slide Seven: Maurice by E.M. Forster

1971

gay/mlm

fluffy, but homophobia exists in the story as well.

“Maurice is heartbroken over unrequited love, which opened his heart and mind to his own sexual identity. In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics.”

This book contains the use of the g slur. Please tell me if I missed something!

Slide Eight: HERmione by H.D.

1981

queer/sapphic woman author

poetry

so mf sad bro I mean look at that blurb

“An interior self-portrait of the poet H.D. (1886-1961) is what can best be described as a 'find', a posthumous treasure. ‘I am Hermione Gart, a failure' -she cried in her dementia, 'I am Her, Her, Her.”

To my knowledge, this book isn't problematic- please tell me if it is though!!

Slide Nine: Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde

1982

lesbian/wlw

A staple of lesbian lit from before the peak of an activist’s career. Great read.

“From the author's vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde's work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her.”

Once again to my knowledge, this book isn't problematic

Slide Ten: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

1982

features queer women

has a movie adaptation!

“Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery, and Sofia and their experience.”

Once again to my knowledge, this book isn't problematic

Slide Eleven: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

1985

lesbian/wlw

“This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts. At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home, and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy, and tender.”

Once again to my knowledge, this book isn't problematic- but warning, there are quite heavy themes!

Slide Twelve: Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

1986

lesbian/wlw

a classic comedy comic + a really good insight & look into lesbian culture

“Grin, giggle, and guffaw your way through this celebrated cartoonist's graphic commentary of contemporary lesbian life.”

Once again to my knowledge, this book isn't problematic*

*contains d-slur used by lesbians in a non-offensive way

Slide Thirteen: Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

1993

lesbian/gender identity around lesbianism

“Woman or man? This internationally acclaimed novel looks at the world through the eyes of Jess Goldberg, a masculine girl growing up in the "Ozzie and Harriet" McCarthy era and coming out as a young butch lesbian in the pre-Stonewall gay drag bars of a blue-collar town. Stone Butch Blues traces a propulsive journey, powerfully evoking history and politics while portraying an extraordinary protagonist full of longing, vulnerability, and working-class grit.”

Once again to my knowledge, this book isn't problematic

Slide Fourteen: Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

1998

lesbian/wlw

historical romance

“Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser, and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins.”

Once again to my knowledge, this book isn't problematic

Slide Fifteen: Under the Udala Trees By Chinelo Okparanta

2015

lesbian/wlw

modern classic imo, look into the coexistence of native Nigerian culture & queerness

“Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child, and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie.”

Once again to my knowledge, this book isn't problematic

[dzpenumbra]

10/14/22

Man, my brain just ran off while getting into bed. I was just thinking about how I really can't wait to meet new people, specifically skaters. It really sucks, because honestly there aren't a lot of skaters in their mid-30's and I turned 36 today. Officially late-30's. Fuckin... quite a feeling. Not really eventful, you only really get noticeable decades past your 20's, but yeah... Most of the skaters my age are really good.

It's intimidating. I mean it always was, there's always someone your age that's better than you, but there are people my age that have a 10-15 year leg up on me. It's not like... a competition or anything. And I can kinda get past the embarassment of just not being good. But like... I feel like good skaters would get bored hanging out with me. Like... they would kinda just bring me with. I don't know. Like I wouldn't have a lot to offer the group.

I then went - damn, it would be really cool if I found a girlfriend who wanted to learn how to skate, or who used to skate or longboard or something and wants to like... really commit to getting better at it. To skating as often as possible as a social and exercise thing. Not as a "I'm gonna be the best skater at the park someday" kind of way. Like, a "try to refine my style and push myself to progress" kinda thing. It would be really cool, and good bonding, and a constant healthy project. That would be really sick, and make it much more comfortable for me to meet new people. Rather than be the random dude in his late-30's at the park skating by himself. Which is me currently.

Then I went on to... how much it sucks that having a family just... didn't happen for me. Like... I always expected it was going to happen, and that I'm gonna be an awesome dad... but it just... didn't happen. There was never a discussion about it, there was never anyone really encouraging it along, no one seemed very interested in it, and then suddenly I look at a calendar and it's 2022. And when you get into your mid-to-late-30's shit starts to get... different. Well, naw, that's actually a complete lie. There are a TON of people on dating apps that still act like they were just removed from suspended animation, frozen in their early 20's. Some even their teens. And it's... something I try to keep a healthy distance from. I have pretty much moved past all the... social pressures for convention or like... this weird mating ritual of dating rules or whatever... taboos and faux pas - with respect to romanticism and open communication about expectations, but cutting through the anxious pressure and just getting to the point because life is short. So that makes the whole concept of dating itself not as daunting as it used to be. It's just meeting a new person and getting to know them, and I love stories, so getting to know people one-on-one is like... something I really enjoy and miss. I'm not really anxious about it anymore, which is nice.

I actually had an idea this morning (I think) of doing a video series, documentary kinda thing... like an art thing... where I interviewed people and tried to ask them... personal questions that elicit strong emotions, but in a way that's... nostalgic, not like... prying or something. It's a weird concept, but this whole talk about peoples' stories is flashing me back to it. I was thinking of like asking an old man at a park about his first kiss, or something like that. Something that's an unforgettable moment, and seeing the way they light up the second it comes into their mind. Like you can outwardly see the physical expression of their imaginative experience. That is fascinating to me, and a complete mirror of the art installation I was going to do where it was a claustrophobic room full of portraits that react to your motion towards them, like a haunted house portrait trope of the art coming alive, but done with rotoscoping - so it has that uncanny valley thing, where the art is believably real - and using very genuine reactions in the portrait from a video project called "CCTV Man" or something like that. Where the reactions are all like legit "get the fuck away from me, what's wrong with you" reactions. That installation was going to be a literal anxiety machine, used to deliberately induce anxiety attacks in the viewer. This video project, it's like the complete inverse. It's like... summoning love in people. Fond memories, warm fuzzy feelings. Through unexpectedly asking them very personal, but relatable things. What was your favorite gift as a child? Did you have a favorite stuffed animal? Stuff like that. I feel like the unexpected nature of it is the ideal way for the... acting... to not be part. To get a real emotion, a pure, unrefined reaction.

Well that was a hell of a tangent. I was talking about fucking dating. So... what happened was I started to see a lot more single moms on the dating sites after my breakup. Around 32. Wow, it's been a while, huh. And now it's pretty much all that. I'm not even looking now, because I'm moving in a month, it's like... what am I gonna do, ask you to move with me when you probably own a house here? It's weird. So I'm just gonna wait, I guess. Not much of a choice. But the weirdest thing for me, as part of a family who just had the first child born out of my two brothers and I, and that brother is like 3 years older than me... Kids in the family is just, a weird thing for my family. And the majority of people on the sites have kids, some in their teens and shit. And that was a big like... brick wall that hit me. Like my prior relationship was kinda like a mini-pandemic for me. Very literally, I was pretty much a shut-in then. So I came out of my 3-year pandemic, smoked a bunch of weed for like 9 months, then went to a rehab place to get off prescribed benzos for good for like 6 months, then got dumped out into the real pandemic a month later. So that time warp "It's fucking 2022, when did that happen?!" that happened to me twice, back to back. I barely had time to process the loss of 3 years, and then I lose another 2. So while I'm sure a lot of you still feel like it should be 2020... I feel like it should still be 2016-2017. And it fucks with my head a bit. So I just get back on dating sites after what feels like a few months, but was actually like 3 years... suddenly it's a big ol' bundle of single moms who had shitty partners during the pandemic, I assume... Or maybe that just happens at this age, I dunno.

So I actually had to process the idea of being the father to someone else's child. Which is weird, I guess, but not off the table. I nannied for my... former goddaughter. It's a long story. Like 10 years ago, when she was an infant. So I know I'm good with kids, and enjoy it. I remember so vividly and fondly being on like 3 hours of sleep and drinking a red Monster with the textured can, the cranberry something flavored one. And eating Clif Bars, the white chocolate macadamia nut ones I got into eating when I was doing a lot of hiking back then. And feeding her some bits if she wanted some, easy on the chocolate though. And quitting smoking, when I smoked like a pack a day, and only smoking at night like... overnight. Because her mom would like... freak out if I smelled like smoke around her, like it was gonna make her sick or something? I think that's a little excessive in hindsight, but man people can make compelling cases sometimes when they are... master manipulators... anyway... I remember trying different TV shows than her usual ones during naptime. Teletubbies just got her cracked out and excited. Not good for nap. So I thought "what's really slow paced and atmospheric and boring." Old TV shows. Like really old. What old TV show would I enjoy watching? Original Twilight Zone. And she took to it like a fish to water, she had no problem, she liked the music I think, and the pacing was nice and slow and not too abrupt. This was well before the age of jumpscares. And she kinda lost interest in the black-and-white, so she'd just nod off and fall asleep on my chest, and I'd watch a show I really like. And fall asleep like 10 minutes later, too. XD

So I know I can be a good dad to someone else's kid. I know that. And it's not like it's a bad thing. I'm just... part of getting older is having to process that not only am I not going to be able to reproduce forever... but I am also considering that my partner will... kinda... be putting her life in danger a bit the older she gets. At least that's what I hear, and I really want to like... prepare for that. So it gets to this feeling where you're like... "if I ask her to have my kid, at like... say we start dating at 36, want to have kids like... 2 years later? Is that too soon? And then... she's gonna be 38... is asking her to have my kid at 38, and the risks involved... is that too much? Is that selfish?" Especially if she already has a kid of her own.

I just really... always thought I'd have the experience of raising my child from birth. And it's not that I'm averse to coming into the game late, better to get to participate and play a meaningful role in someone's life than not at all, in my opinion. I know there are those that disagree, and that's okay, the world needs all kinds. But... I just never really processed that I might just... not get to have my own kid. And that's something I'm trying to keep exploring a bit at a time, so in case it does play out that way... it doesn't blindside me when I'm 45 or 50 all of a sudden or something.

I think my blessing and curse here is that I'm smart about the decisions I make, and I cave into impulse and peer pressure less than those I've known. So, though I too have had my scary close call moments and have made my share of childishly poor decisions, I managed to have the wherewithal to avoid reproducing. And I have thankfully not been bound to those who I was really not a good match for, and vice versa. I am very grateful for my fortune in that department. And now that I'm much more deeply self-aware, I have a very strong leaning towards what I'm looking for and I'm starting to get much more picky. Well... I need to really get better, to be honest.

Get ready for shit you won't believe. The last chick I "dated" came over, played the special that Bo Burnham made during the pandemic for me. Inside. Which was fucking great, but also basically my entire life story. And I have no idea what she was trying to communicate with that? Maybe like... I see you, and it's time to go outside, and I'll save you? or something? I don't know. I really don't know. But she put her head on my chest, and my whole body just seized up like I was being electrocuted or something. It was a huge shock to my system, physical human contact, it was like electricity coursing through my body. And I had a ridiculous panic attack. Like super deep weed freakout level of panic attack. I thought I was dying. Like the reaper was talking to me through the TV and telling me my time was up. A death omen. Those come sometimes to me, it's not like... literal... it's like I'm just realizing a very pure concept of mortality and death. I like to view it through the lens of shamanism/animism, it helps me not take it so fucking literally so it doesn't make me all paranoid I'm schitzo or something. Death omens, in my experience, have been like getting the Death card in tarot. But experientially. So like, profound change, transformation, sometimes actual death as part of it, but... yeah, like a progression of the cycle of life. It was definitely a very clear - "Hi, I'm the concept of Death, and I'm gonna look you in the eyes for a minute so you can know that I'm in your life right now, and you might be trying to ignore me or something... but I'm here." That kinda reminder to the self, and I guess for her too, because she was haunted by a death as well.

See, the death omens made a lot of sense with this context. My dog had suddenly gotten sick and I had to put her down within 24 hours of finding out she was sick, just a week prior. And she had some very traumatic incident with a horse that she told me about that she carried with her. So... there was a white horse that she passed on the way to my house, she sent me a video of it. Just walking through the woods. Surreal, and traditionally a death omen. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see the video myself, very sad, not sure how to make sense of it. Then when she called me to give her directions in to the house, she got divebombed by a red tailed hawk. And the red-tail is one of my animals. I have a necklace with a talon on it, I have lots of feathers in my car I keep close to me. It was like a movie, I swear. And then there was the special, saying the wrong things at exactly the right time, and I freaked out.

But the freakout didn't last very long, like 2 minutes, and I just rode right through it, grounded myself. "It's just a profound feeling and a thought of death/mortality, it's not like... I'm in The Ring or something." Though it really does feel that way sometimes... I swear I just watched too many damn horror movies as a kid! XD And then I was back, shaken but doing surprisingly well. And she got all freaked out all of a sudden. And then... like just ran. Like... after I got out of my panic attack alone, with no support from her, right next to her... and just went back to normal... and didn't freak out or lose my shit... She freaked out. I guess maybe she's never seen someone do that before? I honestly have no idea what happened there. Maybe she just saw an out, an opportunity to dip. Because she did. And she booked it real quick.

Oh, forgot to mention. The way I met this chick... I have a thing in my profile about wanting to get into more 3D sculpture, specifically in stone, wood and bone. And she lived on a farm and offered to bring some bones. And she legit brought 2x 10 gallon buckets full of goat bones. And a lot of them are unusable. And I'm really just thinking the whole thing was an excuse for her to get rid of those bones to an artist who might actually do something with them. I probably don't want to know the story behind them, honestly, but who knows. In hindsight, it was like... what was she thinking? There's no way I'm going to use that many, and I have never worked with the medium before. But she just dumped me with the bones and dipped, and now... I have one month to figure out how to respectfully get rid of these bones without looking sketchy as hell. Because I'm in a bit more of a suburban area, and she was very rural. And people around here don't really know what to do with a rabbit carcass when it gets jacked by a fox - I have a feeling an entire trash bag full of bones they can't identify by eye is just gonna have the cops show up at my door. Because I'm the artist who works nights and never leaves his house, and now they're finding bones in my trash. It's like... jesus fucking christ... I just wanted to try dating again!! I swear to god, 100% of this is true and I really am going to need to figure out how to deal with this shit.

My life is often like an emotional version of Mr. Magoo just stumbling into existential hells and movie-like situations. It's... tiring.

So... I'm thinking the best way to go about this is to just call up the police station, some non-emergency line, and just sit them down and tell them this fun little story. About the newly divorced woman who was obsessed with saving every animal that she could, and used me to get rid of goat bones. And I'm moving, and don't want to sketch out the trash guys and have them call the police without context. No one needs that stress. And ask them if there's an animal control guy around or something, which I know there is, and if he knows what to do with like... properly disposing of animal parts. Because I don't wanna dump this many in the woods or something, that feels sketchy. I'd like to keep a skull to make into an incense burner, because... how often does that creative opportunity come around? But I keep going back and forth on it, because of a weird relationship with death, and a reflexive fear of being judged and... persecuted? I think is the word? Because of something that doesn't have ill intentions, that's legitimately a creative pursuit. I hate my anxiety around that, I wish I could just flip the switch on it, it's so dumb.

But it's a gnarly one, "fear of the judgment of others". And it's probably my primary demon I wrestle with. And it's the one I got to meet personally when took mushrooms, so we're very well acquainted at this point. It can just be really sneaky sometimes.

Seriously though, I wear shirts with skulls on them all the time. Metal band hoodies and shirts and shit. But the second I have a real skull around, I get like... "oh what if people start thinking I'm like a violent person or something?" Ugh, it's obnoxious. I wish that voice would just chill a bit, he's so fucking loud nowadays.

My arm is starting to get a little sore from typing, because I type all weird... so I'm gonna start wrapping this up. My dating history is complicated. And I'm not letting this weird situation stop me from dating at all. I just... might need to be a bit more picky. A bit more discerning. And less desperate. It's really hard, after being alone for so long, but I need to remind myself that it may feel like what I want is just dangling right in front of me... and that I should just look past some big problems in order to get to it... but what I want is to be around the right kind of person, and if they aren't the right kind of person... something else is dangling right in front of me. That's not what I'm seeking. It can be really hard to remember that in the moment.

So yeah, this unexpectedly turned into story-time again. So... I've got some work ahead of me. And getting older is complicated. But hopefully I can meet someone who's at my level, who thinks like me, who understands what I'm looking for in life, and seeks the same. And hopefully I can find a respectful way to get these bones to a better place.

My birthday went pretty good. Didn't sleep very well, had a freakout at like 9, but went back to sleep. Got up, ate food, got high and hopped in the shower. Been a LONG time since I've sung in the shower high, and I really do enjoy it. I want to try singing lessons someday. Then played Session a bit. My mom brought us a pizza to share. I started working on my hoodie, the black Sharpie is working very well and I got all the rings and the pencil guidelines for a mandala done. I showed my mom Session, and she actually tried to play. Like picked up the controller and tried to play it. And I taught her. And not only did she start to get it, but she learned to steer, to revert (when she accidentally lost speed and started rolling backwards switch), and to not only successfully ollie (and accidentally kickflip)... but to ollie up a curb, do a line of hopping down a curb and ollieing up another curb, then actually hop down a 2 set, ollie a 7 set, then sharp left turn and firecracker a 5 set. In one night. And she got that feeling. That "holy shit, I did it!" feeling on every one. So... she got to actually feel what the excitement of skating is like for a skater. And that was a really really big bonding moment. And I'm very grateful for it. I will remember it for a long time, it's a very generous gift.

So I didn't wanna head to bed without mentioning that. I don't really care if I didn't get any real gifts or anything... I had a loved one show an interest in one of my passions, and engage with it to see what I love in it. That is the best gift anyone could give to me, sharing my life. :)

[my-house-of-fashion]

"I don't want my pictures to tell people what they should think" says Alastair Philip Wiper

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British photographer Alastair Philip Wiper explores all kinds of factories, from pork slaughterhouses to sex doll workshops. He says he isn’t trying to shock or influence, just to show people where things come from.

Wiper photographs the facilities that make mass production possible. His images show the machines, the people and the processes used to manufacture the objects of our modern society.

But the Copenhagen-based photographer’s aim is not to make people change their behaviour. He simply wants to reveal a world that the vast majority of people never see.

Alastair Philip Wiper photographs industrial infrastructure, from factories to power stations

“I don’t want my pictures to tell people what they should think and how they should feel,” he told Dezeen.

“I just want them to look and have their own thoughts.”

Scale of consumption

In his new book, Unintended Beauty, Wiper shares images from the factories of Adidas, Playmobil, Bang & Olufsen and more. He also shows power stations and scientific research facilities, along with a dairy farm and a cannabis greenhouse.

The venues he selects tend to be provocative, for instance, the Danish Crown slaughterhouse in Horsens. Wiper prompted an outcry from Dezeen readers after visiting this pork factory, with many shocked by the graphic nature of his photos.

Wiper’s provocative images include the Danish Crown slaughterhouse in Horsens

What was more shocking, according to Wiper, was not the process itself but the scale on which it took place. By revealing it, he hoped to make people think about where their food comes from.

“The overwhelming feeling that I come away with, that is constantly going on in my head, is whether we need this much stuff. Do we need this many shoes or this much pork?” he said.

“The world has been ramped up to a point where everybody thought that this ‘more, more, more’ was good, and suddenly we’re realising we don’t need it.”

Products of our imagination

Wiper says that, even though he has explored factories all around the world, he often encounters things he has never seen before.

On a recent visit to a condom-making facility in Denmark, he was stunned to find it in the back of a cheese factory. He also discovered handmade machines built several decades ago, still in good working order.

The photographer has also visited a medicinal cannabis greenhouse

These places tell a story of human ingenuity that may be unfamiliar to people used to city life, claims Wiper, but which is fundamental to the world we live in.

“These places are all products of our imagination,” he said. They’re representing what we want and what we can do as human beings. Even when there aren’t people in the pictures, they’re all the products of our minds.”

“There is a lot of humanity in that for me,” he added.

“How do we get people to think differently?”

The photographer tries not to form good or bad opinions of of the places he visits.

While he wants to people to recognise the impact of consumption, he is also concerned about the infrastructures that depend on these factories. Not only are they making the objects we buy, they also provide jobs to entire towns.

Scientific facilities he has photographed include CERN, home of the Large Hadron Colider

“There are parts of the world that were once very poor, but now have a much better quality of life because of these factories,” he added.

“Yes, the overall impact is something that we have to reduce. How do we do that without impacting these communities? How do we get people to think differently about the way that they consume? These are such complicated questions.”

Unintended Beauty is published by Hatje Cantz. Wiper’s photographs are also on show at the RIBA in London, as part of the exhibition Forms of Industry, open until 16 May 2020.

Read on for the interview in full:

Amy Frearson: How did you end up in this niche area of photography?

Alastair Philip Wiper: I studied philosophy and politics at university, but when I finished I had no idea what to do with my life. I met a Danish girl, moved to Denmark, and got a job in a restaurant, but I didn’t want to be a cook. Then I started to make some T-shirts, just for fun, and taught myself to use Illustrator, which helped me I get a job as a graphic designer. I was working for an artist and fashion designer who also didn’t have a in-house photographer so then I started taking pictures too. I taught myself and fell into it.

I decided I wanted to become a photographer, but I didn’t want to be a fashion photographer or a portrait photographer. It felt very repetitive. Then I saw some work by some older photographers work in the 50s and 60s. In particular, Wolfgang Sievers and Maurice Broomfield, who were photographing big oil refineries. This was totally fascinating to me. I could see myself going to see the most amazing things, shapes and graphics.

You’ve got to be really fascinated by the thing you’re working with

I went into this niche of industry and science, and pretty quickly I learned that the things I was experiencing and seeing were more important than getting a pay cheque. I think that’s the key to photography or any job really; if you want to do it really well, you’ve got to be really fascinated by the thing you’re working with. I wasn’t interested in science or art particularly, but it can be nice to come at these things with a new energy. You look at everything with different eyes compared to somebody that has been in that world their whole life.

Amy Frearson: Can you tell me about some of your first experiences of photographing factories and infrastructure?

Alastair Philip Wiper: There are two that stand out. One of them is the Odeillo Solar Furnace. In the beginning I didn’t know how to get in anywhere, so I had to find places where I could just turn up. I saw a picture of this building online in an article called “the 10 strangest buildings in the world” or something like that. I camped outside for two days, just watching the light changing on the mirrors. It was a kind of pilgrimage.

Then there is CERN, which is a place I’ve been back to three or four times. The first time I booked myself on a public tour, where you don’t see anything. So I asked the PR office to show me more, and they put me on a trip with an engineer to see some real things. That was a lucky break. I don’t know if they would do that these days.

One of Wiper’s first photography series features the Odeillo Solar Furnace in France

Amy Frearson: I presume getting access to these places is the biggest challenge?

Alastair Philip Wiper: After I got into CERN, I had a couple of other lucky breaks so that suddenly I had a portfolio that was starting to show that I could get inside places. But getting access is always the hardest, especially in the beginning. I have to talk my way in. These days I know the job position of the person I need to find, but in the beginning I had no idea. I thought a caretaker might sometimes let me in the back door, but that never happened.

Amy Frearson: One of your best-known photography series shows inside of the Danish Crown pork slaughterhouse in Horsens. It had a huge reaction from Dezeen readers. Why did you choose to photograph this type of factory?

Alastair Philip Wiper: I do a lot of self-initiated projects and I’m always looking around, thinking about the everyday objects that I consume. I want to know what factory they come from and how I can get in there.

Pork was an obvious one because I live in Denmark, and there’s a lot of pork consumed in Denmark and exported as well. I’m very interested in these kind of taboo subjects. I like things when things we interact with physically are a little bit controversial, when they have a macabre side or a dark humour. I maybe wasn’t thinking about that before I went but after I came out there was something dark about the whole thing that I just found attractive.

At the time I was quite into eating meat. I had been vegetarian when I was a teenager but I stopped because I really enjoyed food. My love of cooking and eating became more important to me than being vegetarian. But it made me feel like I needed to understand what I was eating and where it came from.

Amy Frearson: Did the experience shock you?

Alastair Philip Wiper: The process of seeing pigs going in and being slaughtered wasn’t particularly shocking, because of course I knew what needed to happen to get the bacon to my table and I felt quite strongly that people that ate meat should understand this. If you’re going to eat meat, you should be comfortable with that process and if you’re not comfortable then you probably shouldn’t eat meat.

If you’re going to eat meat, you should be comfortable with that process

The shocking thing for me about the slaughterhouse wasn’t that pigs go in there and get killed, that they have their guts taken out, chopped up and sold to be eaten. That wasn’t shocking to me. It was the volume, the scale, which was amazing.

I don’t want my pictures to tell people what they should think and how they should feel. I just want them to look and have their own thoughts.

Wiper visted South Korea to see a container ship under construction

Since then my attitude has changed a little, in that I’ve become more aware of the impact of meat on the environment. I didn’t think we needed to be eating as much meat. I still enjoy meat but I eat less meat. I only have it on special occasions.

For me the question is, do we need to consume as much? I think you can say that about pretty much everything we consume. As long as there’s a demand for it, there’s going to be places that are killing hundreds of thousands of pigs a week.

Amy Frearson: What other things shock or surprise you in the spaces you photograph?

Alastair Philip Wiper: When I first started going to these places, every place was incredible. I really liked seeing tangles of pipes and wires, that kind of thing. I need to see a really good tangle of pipes and wires to be impressed these days! But I still get really happy when I see things I haven’t seen before. I’ve seen a lot of places and I find similarities in all of them, but I also see things that I’ve never seen before pretty regularly.

Recently I was at a condom factory in the countryside in Denmark. I had been been looking for a condom factory to photograph and thought I would have to go to Germany, but a friend told me there was a condom factory in Denmark. I asked them if I could come and photograph it and they said yes, sure, but told me it wasn’t very big and it was very old.

It turned out to be a small room in a corner of a cheese factory. The cheese factory was owned by a company that has a few businesses, that buys businesses when they can see that there’s good value in it, no matter what it is. The condom factory had actually existed since the 1950s I think and the machines were homemade. At the time they had asked their engineer for a solution for condom packing, so he built one out of wood and put a motor on it. It still works and that’s probably the reason that this company is still profitable. If that machine broke, they would have to buy a new one and then suddenly, maybe it’s not worth it. This is pure conjecture, but this is how my imagination works.

They also had machines that blow up condoms, to test how much air can go in there, and a machine that is like a dildo, that takes it on and off hundreds of thousands to see if it breaks.

Most of the time I see people that are happy, just living a different life to the one that I do

I love the contrast between CERN, where the greatest minds in the world are trying to answer the biggest questions of the universe, the greatest machines human beings have ever seen, and then in my backyard I can find a condom factory that is equally as fascinating.

Amy Frearson: Do you think people are generally unaware that so much construction and industry goes on in the countryside? Is that something you hope to reveal in your pictures?

Alastair Philip Wiper: It’s not something I’ve thought about that much. I don’t differentiate between the countryside and the city. But of course I’m in factories a lot and the world I come from doesn’t see what happens in these places. While I feel like there is a big split between the communities that live in these towns and our cosmopolitan, big-city life, I don’t think I have ever seen anything terrible or been to a factory where people seem unhappy.

People that live in our world have this assumption that it’s horrible work and a horrible life in these places, but most of the time I see people that are happy, just living a different life to the one that I do. But it’s definitely a world that I wouldn’t get to see if I didn’t go to visit these places.

Factories he has photographed include Kvadrat Febrik‘s Innofa textile mill in the Netherlands

Amy Frearson: Have you ever photographed anywhere that made you think differently about a product you consume?

Alastair Philip Wiper: I’m not an investigative journalist or photographer. I’m not trying to show the good or bad side of these places, and I’m usually doing it with the approval of the company that owns the factory. I’m not trying to uncover things. It is also really hard to go into a place for a day and come away with a valid opinion of what is right and wrong. There can be things that are maybe a little bit shocking to us, when actually there’s nothing wrong with them, or there can be things that look totally fine, but actually are really bad. I try to be careful when I form opinions, but it’s not really what I’m trying to do.

The overwhelming feeling that I come away with, that is constantly going on in my head, is whether we need this much stuff. Do we need this many shoes or this much pork? The world has been ramped up to a point where everybody thought that this ‘more, more, more’ was good, and suddenly we’re realising we don’t need it. But communities are surviving on these factories. There are parts of the world that were once very poor, but now have a much better quality of life because of these factories. Yes, the overall impact is something that we have to reduce. How do we do that without impacting these communities? How do we get people to think differently about the way that they consume?

I hope that anybody would find it interesting to see the way that things are made

These are such complicated questions. I’m confused, I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I’m trying not to say anything with my pictures, to tell people how to think. It’s a discussion they can have with themselves. I’m thinking everyday about the way I consume, and how that impacts the world, in a way that I didn’t three years ago. It’s going to take a while to trickle down to everybody, but hopefully it will happen.

Amy Frearson: With your work now on show at the RIBA, do you think there are lessons for architects in your pictures?

Alastair Philip Wiper: I hope there is, but to be honest I know very little about architecture. I hope that anybody would find it interesting to see the way that things are made. Throughout history people have found creative inspiration through things that are made for practical purposes. I don’t think I’m doing anything new there.

Amy Frearson: Can you tell me more about the technical side of your process? What is your process of shooting and editing, and what equipment do you use?

Alastair Philip Wiper: I use a DSLR camera mostly. I shoot medium format sometimes, but I can’t always afford to shoot on medium format, because I need to work super fast and I beat my equipment up a lot. Normally I work very quickly, so I drop lenses and cameras! My most important tools, apart from the camera, are my tripod and wireless shutter release.

I don’t edit a lot. I try to give the pictures my look, by playing with the contrast and the colour, and I adjust the perspective, I don’t have any problem with removing something in the picture that I don’t like, like a bin, but I don’t do that very often, unless I need to. I try to keep everything as simple as possible. The less decisions I have to make, the better. If I do something, it’s only because I think it’s going to add to the picture. It’s not for the sake of doing it.

Amy Frearson: When you say you give the pictures ‘your look’, how would you describe that look?

Alastair Philip Wiper: I want to have a lot of clarity. It shouldn’t feel like it has a filter or a colour cast, it should be very neutral in tone and as sharp as I can get it. It should also be very colourful and bright. I don’t want to make unsaturated, subtle pictures, I want them to be bold, colourful and in your face.

The photographer has also shot the Absolut Vodka Distillery in Sweden

Amy Frearson: Does your approach change when you’re shooting for a commercial client, rather than just for yourself?

Alastair Philip Wiper: I never really change the way I shoot. I approach every subject in exactly the same way and I am very rarely asked to do anything else. I feel really lucky to have that.

Amy Frearson: How important is it to you to show the people that work in these factories, as well as the machinery and objects?

Alastair Philip Wiper: I think this subject can become a bit too clean, too cold, too paralysed. I want there to be to be humour and passion in there, because these places are all products of our imagination. They’re representing what we want and what we can do as human beings. Even when there aren’t people in the pictures, they’re all the products of our minds. There is a lot of humanity in that for me. That’s why I want the pictures to be bold and colourful and a little bit dirty. They don’t have to be too permanent and clean. There are interesting stories in all of these places.

Stories, humanity, humour and eccentricity are all my inspirations for doing this. I’m just blown away that people make all this stuff, that they build machines to build machines. It’s crazy.

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