Wedding

M and I were in Cambridge last night, for my cousin A's wedding to J. It was a lovely wedding but one thing struck me... At the ceremony, held in a small chapel at Robinson College, there were a few signs up saying, "no photography during the service". And then, during the service, before A & O were due to take their vows, the celebrant (I don't know what to call her - she wore a dog collar, but is she a vicar? A Father? A something else? Don't know) said to everyone something along the lines of it being a very sacred thing and that could we have no photographs taken at this time please...

At the reception afterwards the wedding photographer asked me if I'd managed to take any photographs at the service. (I presume he saw the Leica hanging around my neck, he wasn't just asking me out of the blue) and I said that no, I hadn't taken a single photograph and he told me what an uppity woman the celebrant was who was unmovable on the "no photography" rule. I thought to myself, I can understand if the church wants to limit the number of the congretation who want to get a picture of the vows (even though every single person attending is a friend or family member) but to even limit the official photographer? Especially when this is something that A and J would no doubt like a photograph of. What is she afraid of? Camera going to steal her soul? We might not get the significance of the whole event just because we're also recording it? I don't understand. It's irritating that someone else should see fit to impose their own limited understanding of photography onto everyone else.

My conversation with the wedding photographer got me annoyed - not at him - at the celebrant dictating when images should or shouldn't be made. It seems to be happening more and more in different situations - someone deciding that photographs shouldn't be taken of a particular building, a particular person or a particular event... things that are going on in public, that we can all see but apparently can't record. It allows people who don't understand it - or who only understand it in a limited and constrained way to limit and degrade photography - to reduce it to something dirty, or obscene or degrading or somehow negative. For those of us for whom photography is important, thoughtful, useful, uplifiting, artistic... for those of us who understand it better - this limitation is an insult.

I thought the celebrant's little homily on love was a good one. I enjoyed it and it did make me think about marriage and the nature of love. But would it have been degraded or would I have understood less if someone had also filmed that homily? Or photographed it? I don't think so. I'd like to debate with that celebrant why she's wrong about photography but something I've learnt about people who hold these sorts of limited views ... they usually can't see.

(PHOTO GRAPHI NOT ALLOWED ON BOAT, Mumbai, 2002.)