Just having watched some of the ceremony for Jacques Chirac, at the end the coffin was carried out of the church where to my horror some of the invited guests were taking photos of the pall-bearers walking with the coffin through the church.
Is this being disrespectful for the occasion or is it acceptable ?
I found it quite offensive for guests to take snapshots but maybe i’m just an old fuddy duddy ?
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No, I don’t think you are a fuddy-duddy at all, I am a fuddy-duddy par excellence and I can confidently assert that you aren’t one of our dwindling fraternity (there is a women’s chapter).
This rash of snapping everything is symptomatic of a pandemic of pestilential plague (if that isn’t a tautology) consuming the globe (there goes another one).
People are lining the streets in the hope of snapping a selfie with BJ in frame. How low can people sink by thus debasing themselves ( there’s a tautological trio, must be a SF record)? 
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Anything goes, it seems 
It’s in bad taste, IMO, but I reckon it’s something with which we are going to have put. 
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Around here we do not have phones/cameras clicking at funerals - not that I have seen anyway.
However, years ago - newly arrived, we witnessed a huge funeral. It was such an amazing sight. The crowd, the flags, flowers etc etc - .
It was the funeral of my neighbour’s uncle - an old soldier and beloved by everyone. Seeing all the colourful stuff entering the church, I asked her if it would be alright to take a photo at the end… as they all exited.
Please do, she replied and pointed out the window I should lean out of to get the best shot.
The flag-bearers lined the steps leading down from the church. Their flags blew in the breeze as the coffin was gently carried to the waiting hearse. I got a great photo - which I presented to my neighbour the next day. She was delighted - and then she wept all over again. That photo still sits on her sideboard alongside many other family shots.
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But don’t you think a pouting selfie with the coffin in the background is suitably respectful…
Not I thought not, it is appalling.
Heartily agree… awful.
I was able to get a shot which did not show any of the family… just the “flags and the coffin” … it was a one-off and gave great pleasure to a grieving niece.
Don’t approve. Badly brought up people, it is very mal élevé indeed and I would be horrified to see it.
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Ugh! Photos of a hearse with coffin inside and flowers on top are acceptable, or the flowers at the cemetery, but nothing else.
What is it with people having to record everything on their phones? Some people are seeing their lives and special events through their phones. You only have to look at this short video, very few people looking directly at Jennifer Lopez, most looking at her on a 4 inch screen.
I do agree, Mandy. There’s a huge surfeit of these grotesquely expensive florid expressions of narcissistic self-regard to bore any normal individual silly.
I know I’m not in every regard entirely normal, but I am heartily sick of these tedious extravaganzas of stupefying in-yer-face inanity.
Wish they’d give us a fortnight’s respite!
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Worst of all, I thought, were those “mourners” who when they got to file past the coffin at Les Invalides, stood back and took a selfie with the catafalque in the background - totally and deplorably disrespectful to the deceased and to his family. Why were people allowed to take pictures when you are very quickly jumped upon if you dare to take a photo in a museum?
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It is a trend that does seem to require a remedy. Without further delay.
No doubt one will emerge, even if it is just a notice to say “It is forbidden to take photographs of the coffin or its surroundings while paying respects to the deceased. ‘Selfies’ in particular are in very bad taste and likely to give offence to mourners, and to the wider public.”
Notices in various languages would be needed and, for illiterates and the very dim-witted, a notice with the same information in semiotic form.
Agree absolutely.
However, restrictions on photography in museums are for other, non-cultural reasons. Usually it’s either a matter of copyright eg. in the various Picasso museums, or because works on paper and similar supports (usually exhibited under dimmed lighting) become increasingly fragile and brittle through repeated exposure to bright light such as flash photography.
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But what explains the ban on drawing in some exhibitions? That always seems a step too far to me.