Lomo Camera Saves Film Photography

It was a nervous time for film photography when digital cameras took off in the 1990s, and seemed set to take over entirely. But with some help from Vladimir Putin - then deputy mayor of St Petersburg - the little Lomo camera became a retro cult classic, and showed film had a bright future.

In 1991, a group of Austrian art students on a trip to nearby Prague found, in a photographic shop, a curious little camera.

Black, compact and heavy, the camera was rudimentary. The lens was protected by a sliding cover. Loading, focusing and rewinding were all done by hand.

Lomo camera

After developing the shots, the students found it produced pictures unlike anything they had seen before.

The colours were rich and saturated, an effect heightened by the lens's tendency to darken the corners of the frame to create a tunnel-like vignetting effect, and there were dramatic contrasts between light and dark. The Austrians were hooked, and so were their friends when they showed them the results back home in Vienna.

The little camera was the Lomo LC-A - Lomo Kompact Automat, built in Soviet-era Leningrad by Leningrad Optics and Mechanics Association (Lomo) - and very soon a craze was born. It was an analogue Instagram in the days before digital photography.

Lomography

This Lomo craze may have ended up helping save film photography from an untimely end.

In 1992, the students set up Lomographic Society International, exhibiting shots taken on unwanted Lomos they had bought up from all over Eastern Europe.

Then, in the mid-90s, having exhausted the supply of left-over Lomos gathering dust in Budapest, Bucharest or East Berlin, they went to the camera's manufacturers - still making optics in St Petersburg - and persuaded them to restart production. The negotiations were helped along by the support of the city's then deputy mayor, Vladimir Putin.

On Friday 23 November, Lomography is celebrating its 20th anniversary, by starting a series of parties in some of its 36 stores around the world.

The movement's art-school ethos is enshrined in 10 golden rules of Lomography, with an emphasis on spontaneity and experimentation - and a rejection of some of photography's basic laws of composition and focusing. It's common for Lomographers to "cross-process" slide film in negative chemicals, which gives an additional boost to colours and contrast, and to play around with colour filters.

The original LC-A has been joined by a range of other cameras, some of which are redesigns of the LC-A, but there are also various models of plastic-lensed "toy" cameras, the Sprocket Rocket, which exposes the film around the winding sprockets, and the Spinner, which revolves as it shoots, taking a 360-degree picture. The most recent addition is a retro medium-format bellows camera, the Belair.

As former giants like Kodak and Agfa's film ranges have dwindled, Lomography has also rescued old emulsions from extinction or created new ones. There has been much speculation that Lomography may buy the rights to some of Kodak's extinct emulsions if the photography giant - now in bankruptcy protection and likely to focus in future on its printer business - sells off its film division.

It's not the biggest player in the film market, but it's the most vibrant, and it's been there all along - unlike Ilford, which went under, and was resurrected.

Courtesy of Toby Mason

The rise of digital photography is widely supposed to have made film photography redundant. Rather than burn through rolls of film, digital photographers can instantly review and tweak their pics. Lomo cameras have also been derided by some as a fashion accessory, bought by people more concerned with trends than any real love for the art of photography.

Lomography has its celebrity fans, too, from Lord of the Rings actor Elijah Wood to garage rock band The White Stripes.

Courtesy of Kevin Meredith

When all around us other people are looking for an instant fix, instant results, and images that you just take, look at and delete in a flash, then Lomography is doing something great by going against the grain.

There is also one kind of excitement that most digital photographers have forgotten, or will never experience - the wait for the film to come back from the lab!