England - London - Double-decker bus and roadside memorial

A memorial has been placed where a young man called 'Carl.' died in Shaftesbury Avenue, London. If we drove past this place where someone's life ended, the victim would just be a statistic but flowers are left to die too and touching poems and dedications are written by family and loved-ones. One reads: "He was our North, our south/Our east, our West/Our working week and our Sunday rest/Our Noon, our Midnight, our talk, our song/We thought that love would last forever, we were wrong." From a project about makeshift shrines: Britons have long installed memorials in the landscape: Statues and monuments to war heroes, Princesses and the socially privileged. We also nowadays lay wreaths to the ordinary who die suddenly - killed as pedestrians, as drivers or by alcohol, all celebrated on our roadsides and cities with simple, haunting remembrances.

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Filename: memorials018-01-02_2001.jpg
Image Size: 4370x4358 / 6.9MB; memorial shrine death macabre memory family social gesture commemorate place location remembrance token remember public tragedy grief mourning atheism agnostic scene landscape intimate sudden loss culture practice habit tradition floral tribute mortality final loved-one respects bereavement fatality casualty offerings reminder statistics anonymous spiritual expression marker context victim makeshift left emotional sadness sad bus urban city capital GB British English Europe EU Great Britain England UK London double-decker flowers transportation transport road roadside passenger nosey interest street love sorrow killed bouquets fate traffic blurred speed Kennington tragic
Contained in galleries: Roadside Memorials

A memorial has been placed where a young man called 'Carl.' died in Shaftesbury Avenue, London. If we drove past this place where someone's life ended, the victim would just be a statistic but flowers are left to die too and touching poems and dedications are written by family and loved-ones. One reads: "He was our North, our south/Our east, our West/Our working week and our Sunday rest/Our Noon, our Midnight, our talk, our song/We thought that love would last forever, we were wrong." From a project about makeshift shrines: Britons have long installed memorials in the landscape: Statues and monuments to war heroes, Princesses and the socially privileged. We also nowadays lay wreaths to the ordinary who die suddenly - killed as pedestrians, as drivers or by alcohol, all celebrated on our roadsides and cities with simple, haunting remembrances.