A travel photographer and his wife have come under fire for a series of horrifyingly insensitive wedding photographs they staged in the Democratic Republic of Congo last year.
John Milton’s photographs show the newlyweds being held at gunpoint atop a volcano and the bride “Just cruising’ thru the ghetto in Congo in a wedding dress,” according to a caption.
The photos recently resurfaced after Cecilla Christin, a woman unknown to the couple who found their photos on Instagram, shared them on Facebook.
“What in the fresh yt hell is this mayo encrusted bullshit?” Christin wrote in a post accompanied by screenshots from Milton’s Instagram account. “There are literally too many things wrong here.”
In a 2016 interview, Milton describes himself as a “Yankee living in Budapest” and a former investment banker. Some of his Congo photographs were featured on photographer Steve Huff’s website last year under the title “Outside of the Box Congo Wedding Shoot with the Leica M10.”
“After the Congo wedding we needed an epic honeymoon,” Milton said of his photos. “Therefore we decided upon a daring adventure in an Islamic region of Africa where sadly enough modern-day slavery still exists.”
Critics on social media have accused the pair of engaging in “misery tourism.”
“Black people are not props or accessories,” one Facebook user commented.
In one of the photos, a ring sits atop an assault rifle with the caption “‘Blood Diamonds’ What a combo! Diamonds and an AK47.”
Denouncing the couple for using “black and brown people and their experiences as props to gain a following,” Christin told INSIDER that she decided to share the pictures “to foster discussion within my friends and following.”
While Milton’s Instagram account appears to have been taken down, screenshots obtained by INSIDER show that the photographer referred to himself on the platform as an “African tribes junkie” and “‘outside the box’ adventurist.”