Lawrence Mason thought he had seen all of Lockerbie, Scotland. But after collaborating with a Lockerbie Scholar, he learned there’s more to the town than just the disaster it endured.

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Pan Am Flight 103 air disaster, Mason, a professor in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, is showcasing three Lockerbie photography exhibits in the lobby of Newhouse I.

On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 went down over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland. The terrorist attack killed 270 people — 35 of them Syracuse University students.

The three exhibits, “Lockerbie and Disasters,” “The Healing of Lockerbie” and “Lockerbie Forward” all show the evolution Mason said he has witnessed in Lockerbie in the past 17 years.

“Lockerbie and Disasters” will be displayed in Newhouse I through Thursday, when the second exhibit, “The Healing of Lockerbie,” will be presented.

Mason said he taught eight of the students who died in the disaster over Lockerbie and “felt a strong pull to go there to find a sense of peace or closure out of the disaster.”

In the fall of 1996, when he was teaching in London, Mason and 15 of his students piled onto a bus to take a tour of Lockerbie.  After visiting the disaster site, Mason said everyone — even those who had no contact with the victims — were crying by the end of the afternoon.

“We all thought we had seen Lockerbie,” Mason said. But after collaborating with Alison Younger, a Lockerbie resident who received a scholarship to attend SU for one year, he changed his mind.

For the 10th anniversary of the tragedy, the university asked him to showcase his photos from his first visit to Lockerbie, he said. Mason said he then invited Younger to write the introduction to his photography show.

When Mason read what Younger wrote, Mason said he realized there was much more to Lockerbie than just the Pan Am Flight 103 tragedy.

“Alison wrote about a town I had not seen. She didn’t talk about the disaster sites at all, she talked about family, school, friendship and smiles,” Mason said. “I realized that I was really foolish to think that seeing the disaster sites meant that I saw Lockerbie.”

The next time Mason taught for a semester in London, he decided he was going to see the “real Lockerbie,” he said.

“What I’ve seen over 17 years is an evolution in Lockerbie, first as a disaster site, then I have seen healing happen, and after all those years I have thoughts of where Lockerbie goes from here,” Mason said. “So rather than present a conventional photo show, which would have been, ‘Here is what I’ve seen,’ I thought, ‘Let’s do the show in three phases.’”

Emily Pompelia, a Remembrance Scholar who visited Lockerbie in the past, said in an email that she has seen the photos and described them as “surreal” and “humbling.” She said the trip was very emotional, but a reminder of the positive relationship Syracuse has built with Lockerbie.

The exhibits are almost exclusively Mason’s photography. For each of his photos, he provides extensive captions for viewers that “show them what I have seen and tell them what it meant to me.”

Mason said he hopes that after the exhibits are showcased at the university and then at an SU school that is yet to be chosen, his work will be donated to somewhere in Scotland.

Published on October 21, 2013 at 2:17 am

Contact Kate: kacapoda@syr.edu