Lomo, or Leningradskoye Optiko Mechanichesckoye Obyedinenie, is Russia's premier maker of optical devices. Situated in St Petersburg, the company began making cameras for military and espionage purposes as early as 1914. Some 15 years later they would create a robust yet compact and light-sensitive camera that was the company's first non-defense product.
Fast-forward to the 1980s: Soviet General Igor Petrowitsch Kornitzky, inspired by Nikon, the household camera for Japanese at the time, gives orders to refine and mass-produce Lomo cameras for Soviets everywhere. His intention was to let every Soviet comrade have a Lomo to document their glorious Soviet lives. Millions of cameras were promptly produced and inexpensively sold. Russians and their fellow communists in Vietnam, Cuba and East Germany happily snapped their way through the 1980s, documenting the last gasps of communism.
The worldwide phenomenon didn't begin until a decade later when two Viennese students took a trip to the Czechoslovakia in 1991. In a flea market in Prague, they found two used Lomos, which they knew nothing about except that they were small and cute. Finding some leftover film in the cameras, they took several photos of their trip. Back in Vienna they got a real surprise: The images were nothing like what they expected with an ordinary camera.
The photos quickly circulated among their friends, and their friends' friends and demand became so great that they travelled to the manufacturer in Moscow to purchase 50 new cameras.
What appealed to them was its imprecise, night-vision viewfinder that often leaves out more than half of the intended subject, the intensified primary colors that can be as bright as seen by the naked eye, and the resulting uncomposed or abstract images, which they began calling Lomography.
They soon founded the Lomographic Society in Vienna, with the first Lomographic exhibitions, parties and activities.
In 1995 the Lomographic Society was registered as a limited company and bought the rights to the camera from its Russian manufacturer -- who had just decided to halt production -- and began distributing it globally. By this time, the society's international network had sprouted over 100 branches.
Between 1995 and last year, approximately 300,000 people worldwide became members of the society. In Taiwan, since establishing itself in March with some 600 members, the society has grown to over 3,000, about 50 of whom regularly post their works on the society's Web site.
Picture-imperfect
Pictures taken by a Lomo camera typically show blocks of blurred colors or flaming lights against a dark background. Sometimes, the images look more like abstract oil paintings than photographs. The camera's inability to exactly record images was seen as full of unrealized potential and turned into creative advantage.
"It often happens that we can't recognize the photos we took because they are far from what we intended. It's unpredictable, and that's what makes it interesting," Damien Brachet, head of the Lomo Society's Taiwan branch, told the Taipei Times.
As he talks, he snaps intermittent shots without bothering to focus or even look through the viewfinder -- just swings his arm and clicks. This casualness, he explains, is how many good Lomo photos are taken.
The resulting photos may leave people wondering what they're looking at. That perhaps is the intention, as Lomo photos are seldom seen individually but made into a montage of hundreds of photos.
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