Sam Leith Sam Leith

It’s time for vicars and wedding photographers to make peace

Credit: iStock/szakalikus

This week’s unexpected public smackdown is… vicars versus wedding photographers. What a time to be alive! The latter have hoisted a petition on the website change.org, which has already attracted more than 900 signatories, demanding that vicars be nicer to them.   

 ‘Not all church leaders are problematic, but a LOT are – and those that are problematic are not only hindering professional video/photographers from doing the job they’ve been paid to do, they’re more often than not rude, humiliating, aggressive and abusive.’ An example is given as a link: a TikTok of an extremely unsmiling bald clergyman telling the photographer to get the hell out of the way or he’s going to stop the ceremony.  

What we’re seeing in this story is, under the skin, a clash of faiths

 ‘We come in PEACE,’ say the snappers. We have jobs to do too, they say: they don’t mind respecting boundaries and fitting in with the solemnities of the day, but they’d like not to be treated with contempt just because they’re holding cameras.

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