©wontok2007

It is said that during the space race, the americans spent many hours and many millions of dollars developing the NASA ink pen for note taking in zero gravity… the Soviets took the cheaper route and opted for a pencil.

True or not it is a neat demonstration of the dangers of too much choice and too many resources clouding the mind.

In the creative world, now saturated with technology and where bigger better faster are the buzzwords it has again fallen to the Soviets to take the simpler route in the search for creative enlightenment. This time in the form of the Lomo camera. A small and wonderfully basic device that has inspired its own minor revolution amongst photographers just as photo chemical photgraphy is fading fast.

This is the law:
1. Take your LOMO everywhere you go and whenever you go.
2. Use it any time - day or night.
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but a part of it.
4. Shoot from the hip.
5. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible.
6. Don't think.
7. Be fast.
8. You don't have to know beforehand what you've captured on film.
9. You don't have to know afterwards, either.
10. Don't worry about the rules.

This isn't some Politburo edict or agitprop call to arms but the 10 rules of Lomography as coined by the World Lomographic Society, based in Vienna.

The rules grew in response to the pictures produced by to the Lomo's very manual controls and its tiny 'Minitar1' lens. The singular property of which is an eerie tunnel vision effect in the final print and supersaturated colour.

In brief the history of the Lomo runs so: In 1982 a Soviet comittee decided to design an manufacture a cheap mass produced camera for the benefit of the soviet citizens.
At the time many cheap Japanese cameras were coming to market.
The state's arms and optical factory (LOMO) was chosen for this task and evetually came up with the LOMO kompact LCA. For many uears it enjoyed popularity in the USSR as a leisure camera until it began to suffer from competition in the form of cheaper, more reliable asian imports. The camera was uneconomic to make and in 1991 the future looked dire for the LCA.

Enter stage left [or should that be right?] a group of Austrian students on holiday. Intrugued by the camera they bought a few and began snapping away. Once the results were printed the creative potential of the camera was immediately apparent. Its blurry, distorted colours and capacity for the happy accidient inspired the first lomographers and kickstarted a small but global cult. A near miss was avoided in the 90’s when the LOMO factory threatened to discontinue production again. A petition by the Austrians and an intervention from Vladimir Putin gave the camera a stay of execution.

The popularity of the camera grew and the original Austrian discoverers ofthe LCA put things on a more permanent footing by founding the lomographic society. Its aim was to market the cameras and promote the phenomenon. In 1994 a simultanious exhibition in Moscow and New York was held introducing a distinctive Lomographic hallmark, the 'Lomowall'.

Lomowalls are more often than not group efforts, myriad pixelated collages of photos pasted into a huge grid, offering at at arm's length a tapestry of colour but then revealing on closer inspection an unfolding kaleidoscope of moments captured or lost.

lomography is united by two things: the love of the cranky camera and crucially by the Lomography website. Here users can upload edit, share and comment on each other's efforts. Its also acts as a shop front for the Lomographic Society, nowadays an extremely savvy commercial enterprise selling all manner of analogue cameras and increasingly hard to find film.

The cameras available have multiplied. The Lomo is now manufactered in China, althought the lenses are still the genuine Russian article. It sits on the lomo site alongside other 'fun' cameras. A rip cord powered model that produces four vertical slices of time, a 'frogeye' camera producing a 170° image. Other russian 'deadstock' cameras feature, notably the Holga. A medium format model that uses 2" film and is notable for its light leaks and need for taping it up between rolls.

On registration the lomo user can decorate their home page with a lomo wall, keep a blog [this article was composed on Wontok's blog], view and animate their photos, [some lomos take primitive time lapse sequences] or just cruise other lomographers pages for a blurry take on the world at large. The lomographer can randomly sample images or perhaps browse the map on the world.browser for a lomographic take on a destination; 112,874 images at the time of writing. Want know what Macao looks like, on the hoof? with no holds barred? A couple of clicks shows you the 286 images that ‘Waidick’, ‘Caliou’, 'God2046’ and ‘Mrii’ have taken of their home city. You can photomail ‘Ra-mses’ for advice on a vist to Antwerp or check out ‘7Samurai’s’ food tips for Bangkok

The opportunity for online interaction between users has spawned lomogroups and lomomeets where members gather to hear a keyword for they day and then disperse to go and embody the keyword in a picture.

Taking the unpredicatble one stage further are ‘doubles’ and ‘triples’. Your roll of film is shot, carefully rolled back into its drum and then sent onto another member for re-exposing over your images. Wierd juxtapositions of two or even three experiences emerge from the negatives, although its must be said the opportunity for blank write-offs suddenly squares or cubes when you take this route.

Users reguarly swap comments on each others sites or discuss techniques such as cross-processing, a Lomo hallmark technique where slide film is put through the 'wrong' chemistry resulting in high contrast, ultra saturated prints that incorporate odd colour shifts.
Encouraged by the 'break the rules' rule users will often boast of their forays into the what ifs of photography, what if I used out of date film? what if I bake my film in the oven?

Spin-off phenomena include 'World Pinhole Day' in which submissions are encouraged using pinhole cameras, extra kudos goes to cameras made from unusual materials, Lego[tm] being a notable example.

In using the internet for promoting an analogue camera the Lomo Society were at the vanguard of online photo asset management long before the likes of blogspot or flickr came along. They also anticipated open-contribution stock image services such as istock photo by marketing the best lomo images commercially. In exchange for providing an enviroment for contributors to store (at not too onerous a resolution) and catalogue their images the Society has an archived and keyworded resource at its fingertips.

As a tool the Lomo is especially popular with creatives, who find its raw unpredictablity inspiring. Among the profiles posted on lomohomes, links to design or photography sites are very common.
Photographers, both professional and amatuer enjoy the lack of fussiness surrounding the camera. It is often poorly made, especially original soviet era models and to get any images at all requires some patience and a philosophical outlook.
This seems to break through the debris that any creative personality picks up over the years and allows them to look at thngs afresh, "I learned more about myself and the way I see the world around me in the first year that I used the LC-A than in all the years that I used my 35mm SLR. says 'Chuo104' (Region, Tokyo; Style, take my camera everywhere; Personal motto, "Listen to the trees"), "Using the LC-A also helped me broaden my view of photography and what constitutes a 'good' or 'great' photograph."

Lomographer and graphic designer Jaypeg, (Country, GB; Style, "biffle about a bit"; personal motto, "I like jam") actively prefers the lack of instant gratification exemplified by the lomo.

"Therein lies the challenge. some people say lomo is easy, but in the soft world of digital technology I would disagree and say that you have to learn a different approach to picture taking which can be quite hard to master. The LCA represents the whole Lomo idea of shooting from the hip, of taking your camera everywhere, of being prepared for unconventional results. For me this was the biggest draw and the biggest challenge. That and the vignette. I've never seen another camera vignette like that and I think it rocks."

The vignette referred to is the blurry penumbra surrounding images taken through small or low quality lenses. In more serious cameras vast amounts of time and expense are put to eliminating this unfortunate fact of optics whereas the russian camera enthusiast will take it right on board with the other lomo baggage.

A key aspect of Lomography is that editing is paramount. Followed properly the 10 rules mean there is only suprise come the day that the prints are collected. From there on in the happy accidents are counted and scanned and put up for inclusion at lomography.com, or pasted to a lomowall.

The renound photographer Cartier Bresson was correct when he quoted "There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment" but is worth noting that the decisive moment is something appreciated in hindsight.
Digital photography cannot offer this. Not unless you are utterly ruthless in not reviewing any of your pictures until a suitable distance from the event is gained.

Surely all this cranky plastic can be dispensed with? Creativity is creativity and ideas need to be worked at? Well no, creativity must be constantly fed with the unexpected and the unusual. Ideas mature at second remove, not at the split second delivery offered by digital image capture.

So the Lomo, Smena and Holga can stay, and while we’re at it we’ll chuck out the space pen, get a pencil and remind ourselves that in amongst the noise of possibilities less, not more, may be the key to truly inspired innovation.



The lomoworld congress is in London 17 – 23 September 2007. The world Lomowall will be on display in Trafalgar Square