If we talk about “Lomography”, we have to go back to 80’s and think… Russia. Two generals decided to copy the design of a small and compact Japanese camera to be distributed trough all the Soviet sphere. One of the generals was the director of a Russian optical company called LOMO PLC, so the camera took that name.
The camera was a cheap one, designed for the working class, which produced pictures with a great colour intensity, a great saturation and a “tunnel effect” that gets dark the frames of the photo. The focus was primitive and it only had 4 modes: 0.8 metres, 1,5 metres, 3 metres and infinite so the fact that many images were out of the focus was very common. Besides you could get an overexposure of the images or put some colour paper filters in the flash, which gave to the photo a more original touch.
However, it wasn’t until the 90’s when two Austrian students (Matthias Fiegl and Wolfgang Stranzinger) discovered the freshness of these cameras. The LOMO cameras were in the process decline, because by that time the Japanese ones were invading the market. These students bought a pair of them in a street market and discovered the effects of these particular devices. Blinded by the numerous colours and the peculiar signs of these kind of pictures, they decided to set up a business with those cameras. They created the Lomography Society and worked to spread the Lomography message all over the world. And since then, this revolutionary way of photography has grown a lot and it is still growing. We can check it in the official web page where all the owners of a LOMO camera can get registered and share their pictures with the rest of the LOMO users and non- users.
Lomography is more than a new photography vision. It is a way of life where you shoot at everything you see without thinking. It is a new step into the more classical photograhpy yardsticks. Maybe they are not the most technical and precise photos, but they are fresh, care-free and lovely.
Judge for yourself and enjoy the pics!
