Lomo LC-A
Lomography seems to me to be less about photography and closer to some sort of random art form. The desired results have less to do with any input or control from the user and relies heavily on the many quirks of the camera itself. Strange though it may be, I absolutely love it.
The Lomo LC-A, a Soviet Bloc era camera with a plastic lens, was discovered by a group of young Austrians in the early 90’s. They loved the photos that the camera produced and promptly contacted the Lomo company in St. Petersburg, Russia, in order to negotiate the distribution rights of the camera in the West. Somewhere along the line the future Russian premier, Vladimir Putin, got involved and the deal was done.
These entrepreneurial Austrians procceded lead an organization that comes close to a religion/cult and sold the LC-A along with a whole range of other “Toy Camerasâ€Â. I bought a couple of second hand models – the LC-A and a Semna Symbol, and have had some good results. There are thousands of lomographers all over the globe, good examples of their art can be found here.
However, all lomographic cameras are film based.
If you Google the terms ‘lomo’ and ‘digital’ you will probably find a gazillion pages of tutorials or plugins for Photoshop and other imaging software. I’ve tried quite a few of these, and whilst they provide interesting results they are inaccurate and, in my opinion, fail to come close to the random quirky art that the original camera produces. However, as time marches on, film and film developers have become less popular due to the mainstream explosion of digital photography.
So what now? I remember reading about an Epson R-D1 being hacked to handle the LC-A’s Minitar lens, but I’m not sure that I’m up to that sort of thing. So I now bring you back to that group of young Austrians who really do have to ask themselves how to future proof their company. Can they can develop a small digital camera that encapsulates the Lomographer’s philosophies on art with the modern age? The minitar lens is not a problem. The grainy quality of a paper print in digital form will be hard to precisely replicate, but an evolution could take place.
Is it possible? Yes! … Will it ever happen? Well, we will just have to wait and see. It’s up to them.