In early December of 2019, major sites including The Knot, Pinterest, BRIDES and Zola announced that they would stop promoting and featuring weddings that take place at former slave plantations. Pinterest, for example, will block ads that have the words “plantation” and “plantation wedding” in them. And The Knot and Zola will no longer list former slave plantations on their lists of recommended vendors. The decision snowballed after Color of Change, a nonprofit formed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to strengthen the political voice of African-Americans, successfully lobbied five leading companies in the wedding industry to change their practices.

“Plantations are physical reminders of one of the most horrific human-rights abuses the world has ever seen,” says Arisha Hatch, the vice president and chief of campaigns at Color of Change, citing the enslavement of over 10 million black people in the Americas. “The vast majority of the wedding industry’s marketing fails to recognize plantations as sacred spaces where the bodies of many black people’s ancestors are buried in unmarked graves to this day.”

The ban was enacted despite the popularity of former slave plantations as venues among couples. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, for instance, were married at the Boone Hall Plantation in South Carolina, one of the oldest working plantations in the country. And more recently, Hayley and Justin Bieber tied the knot at Montage Palmetto Bluff, also in South Carolina, which is located on the site of 15 former plantations.

In order to better understand how this public outcry will affect those in the industry, we spoke to wedding photographers about their views on the subject and how they uphold their core values in their work.

“It’s like a muscle pain,” says Adonye Jaja, a Denver-based wedding photographer who was named one of Rangefinder‘s 30 Rising Stars of Wedding Photography in 2016, about what the stand against plantation wedding venues meant to him as a black wedding photographer. “You don’t know it hurts until you move it.”

Jaja, who spent his teenage years in Savannah, Georgia, was born in Nigeria. He notes that he is not descended from slaves, but the legacy of historical racism stemming from black slavery in the U.S. affects him professionally regardless. He recalls early in his career, while shooting a wedding in Denver, when within earshot a bridesmaid announced to the wedding party that she would never want to have a black person in her wedding. “She was responding to me being there, and I had never thought about that being a challenge for me,” he says. “The way it’s worked on my mind psychologically since then is if I don’t book a wedding, I wonder if it’s because they didn’t have black people.”

Learning to Embrace Her Heritage, One Wedding Photographer Calibrates Her Brand to Diverse Couples

He also remembers times while working as a second shooter when his photographs on social media were posted without crediting him—the other photographers he worked with were given credit. “The horrible thing about those circumstances is that you don’t know what it is,” he says. “As soon as I say something, I’m the angry person. I’m the one using race as a card. I try to keep quiet and work hard.”

The offenses don’t need to be as egregious as excluding someone based on their race to put a photographer in an uncomfortable position. Randi Kreckman, a photographer based in Hawaii who was a 30 Rising Star in 2019, says she is often asked to take photographs in locations that are forbidden, either because they are sacred ground for local tribes or because they are dangerous. 

“I had this one client who got really upset I wouldn’t take a photograph on the road leading up to the Ho’omaluhia Botanical Garden, where photography is forbidden because it leads to really bad traffic issues,” she explains. “The client got upset and kind of forced me to do it anyway.”

She has learned from that mistake. Now, Kreckman is as up front as she possibly can be with clients about what her boundaries are before a shoot begins.

Six-Figure Wedding Photography: The 3 Building Blocks of Branding For Your Ideal Client

Almost universally, the photographers we spoke to advised that the best way to get in front of a potentially uncomfortable situation with a client is to be open and honest about your beliefs on your social media channels and websites. 

Kreckman, for example, will share tips on Instagram posts that teach both potential clients and visiting photographers how to protect marine wildlife and native lands while visiting Hawaii. In doing so, she lets potential clients know what her boundaries are while at the same time educating them.

Elizabeth Austin-Davis, an Atlanta-based photographer who was also a 30 Rising Star in 2019, populates her social media pages and website with images that promote inclusivity. “If people don’t see themselves in your work, they won’t feel welcome,” she says. On the three occasions when she was asked to shoot weddings at a former slave plantation, Austin-Davis turned down the offers over the phone rather than in an email. She told the potential clients that out of respect for her heritage as a black American woman, she does not shoot at plantations. “Once you’ve been exposed, you don’t have an excuse,” she says.

A New Wave of Social Networks Make Diverse Photographers More Visible

Carrie Swails is very clear about who she is on her website and who she likes to work with. In a section listing her core values, Swails stipulates that she does not participate in cultural appropriation of items like teepees, dreamcatchers or henna unless the clients are from cultures that use them. “When members of a dominant culture utilize traditions, tools and rituals from an oppressed culture in their wedding, it furthers problems of falsehoods, stereotyping and systemic racism—especially when published online, where stories are often misunderstood,” the section notes.

To further protect herself, Swails has also listed her core values in her contract. “If you’re going to be the kind of photographer who turns down plantation weddings, or refuses things that are cultural appropriation,” she says, “it’s an all or nothing commitment.”

Jaja notes, however, that change is not an all or nothing proposition. “I think you can reform a place without deleting a place,” he says. “I think it’s possible to make the old places of hurt into places of joy.”

He recalls speaking with fellow photographer Ben Blood about a hypothetical agency that would set a code of conduct for the industry: When a vendor followed the universal code of conduct, they would receive a badge on their website and be added to an industry-wide list of approved vendors, and sites or vendors committing offenses would be approached and invited to reform. If a plantation wanted to serve as a wedding venue, the agency could ask that the owners make the effort to educate clients and guests about the history of oppression and abuse.

But in the absence of such an agency, Austin-Davis says photographers need to find ways to approach difficult topics without attacking the other side. “We need to give each other a little more grace,” she says. “We’re all becoming more aware of how our culture affects other people and how it makes them feel.”