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Top: The iconic Lomo LC-A camera; Above: Fisheye images from a Lomo; Right: Paul Smith's limited-edition Fisheye camera made in collaboration with Lomography Cameras
PHOTOGRAPHY
UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT
Lomography
Analogue technology is on life support. It's been teetering on the edge of extinction for two decades, as music, photography and TV succumb to all things digital. But tucked away in far-reaching corners of the world are lomographers — analogue anarchists who take photographs the old-fashion way: with 35mm film and quaint cameras distributed by the Lomographic Society International, an Austrian outfit founded by Matthias Fiegl and Wolfgang Stranzinger in the early 1990s.
The pair brokered an exclusive contract with Russia's Leningrad Optics and Mechanics Association, a firm that has been manufacturing these defiantly retro devices since the 1930s.
While the rest of the photographic industry espouses the virtues of more megapixels and larger touch-screens, lomographers enthuse about their cameras' blurry, over-saturated images. The Lomographic Society even has "The 10 Golden Rules Of Lomography" — tongue-in-cheek guidelines that help budding David Baileys achieve these random results. They include "take your camera everywhere" (No. 1), "use it any time — day and night" (No. 2) and "don't worry about any rules" (No. 10).
However, the finished products aren't what you'd expect. There's a warmth and playfulness in the pictures, while their diffused >>>
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© 2009 Commercial Break
INFO
New York's Lomography Gallery Store, 41 W 8th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Tel: (212) 529 4353
Websites
Lomographic Society International
Lomography on Flickr
Jerad Sloan's mock advert on "The 10 Golden Rules Of Lomography"
