Piper Alpha

Tomorrow marks the 20th Anniversary of the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster in which 167 oilmen died when the oil platform exploded.

Today i went along to photograph the memorial and hopefully document the whole anniversary in photos, however i just couldn't. What you see here is one of the 3 (burst) photos i took today of the memorial. I couldn't take more because i just couldn't understand why i would really want photos of this on the day before the anniversary. I mean, i KNEW why i wanted it, but i just couldn't work out what really gave me the right to photograph a statue of a memorial that on a personal level had no emotional meaning to me when there were men and women walking up crying at the memory of the lost loved one.

I stood for about 30 minutes around this memorial feeling ashamed by the fact i was there holding my camera bag when others arrived with just flowers in their hands.

A girl in my school year died on the night of the school prom and the day after the media were knocking on the doors of friends and family of the schoolgirl just to get some sort of story. I just couldn't get out of my head the thought of disgust at that point because everyone has the right to grieve. Today i felt like i was the idiot who cared nothing about the history and emotions just by holding my camera bag and i felt like i was as bad as those knocking on the doors of the friends and family of that schoolgirl.

It is for the above reason i very nearly didn't upload this as the blip today.

R.I.P.