Observations on Lomography

Is there anything duller than the modern-day digital camera? They cope with any subject matter from the Alps to an ant. They take all the artful cleverness of great pictures away from their owner, since they are so clever themselves. They even rob you of the surprise of finding out what you have taken, since you see the results instantly. And when did you last hold a photograph in your hand? More and more of us never even bother having our digital photographs processed, streaming them straight on to sites such as Facebook. It therefore comes as a bit of a relief to discover that film photography has been rehashed, jumbled up and returned with a wholly witty vengeance, as Lomography.

The Lomo factory in Leningrad produced arms and optics for the Soviets. As an offshoot of its spy cameras, at some point in the 1980s the factory produced a commercial camera, the Lomo LC-A. It was the Trabant of the photography world; but after glasnost, they disappeared, until 1991, when some hip Austrians rediscovered them, and have since devoted themselves to a global cult of happy-snappy film photography.

To get into Lomography, you’ll need a film camera. This should not under any circumstances be a po-faced, heavy thing with glass lenses and a proper case. To be a real Lomographer, you must have a light plastic camera, on which you have only spent about £40. It can be an original Lomo, or one of the many cheap copies available. If you like, it can be customised with fun things such as multicoloured flashes, fish-eye lenses or devices that blank out half the shot – giving the effect of putting your thumb in the picture, on purpose.

Then you must accept the Ten Rules of Lomography, such as “photography must not be an interference in your life, but part of it”. Ardent Lomographers take photographs all the time, everywhere, day or night. “Don’t think” is a key tenet. This last is illustrated on the Lomography website (www.lomography.com) with a man putting his head in a public waste bin. It’s quite funny.

This is the point of Lomography. Being relaxed and taking photos which make you laugh, which celebrate “mistakes” and which enjoy all of life, including people putting their heads in bins. “You don’t have to know what’s on your film” is another rule of Lomography, which naturally also stipulates, in classic anarchic style, that one of its rules is not to worry about the rules. Get snapping!

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