Corporate and Worker Photographs of the Offshore Oil Industry: The Case of the Ocean Ranger

Images of hydrocarbon extraction at sea remain strikingly circumscribed. The most extensively circulated are either the work of professional industrial photographers employed by oil companies to take carefully vetted promotional shots, or of news photographers commissioned to document catastrophes. Corporate-sponsored photography enforces the massive scale of offshore rigs, their technological sophistication, and apparent ability to withstand the vicissitudes of the ocean; it also tends to imply that companies adhere to strict safety regimens, and equal opportunity hiring practices. Photographs created by offshore oil workers are not widely circulated in the public domain. However, three collections of images recently donated to Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial archives offer new viewpoints on the oil industry. Lance Butler, David Boutcher, and Lloyd Major were all employed on the Ocean Ranger platform, which capsized off the coast of Newfoundland in 1982 with the loss of 84 lives–including Boutcher’s. The men’s images resituate, expand upon, and on occasions challenge tropes that predominate in corporate photography; the striking arrangement of David Boutcher’s snapshots in album format by his mother is also salutary. This essay argues for the necessity of “onshoring” the offshore, and claims that workers’ photographs can potentially help us do so through a variety of means.