A quirky Russian relic is reborn as the photographer’s best friend

Photography by Peter Domankiewicz

Mention ‘lomo’ to the average Spaniard and you will quickly find yourself immersed in an animated conversation about the merits of different pork products. Add the word ‘camera’ and most likely you will be stared at like you are a “crazy inglish”. But once in a while something different will happen. Your companion’s eyes will light up, an adrenaline rush of enthusiasm will overwhelm them, and suddenly a wonderful feeling of conspiracy will fill the air; a sense of things unspoken, yet shared.

For some it’s just a name for some cameras. For some it's become a rallying point for those who remain profoundly unmoved and unseduced by digital wizadry—people who like to look at the world from another angle; a world where serendipity has a place in creativity.

Then, while in Germany on business in 1995, Pasquale bought a curious little black Russian camera and brought it home. The camera was the Lomo Kompakt Automat (thats an ‘LC-A’ to the initiated) and it came with a philosophy and rules from a couple of odd-balls in Vienna. The rules said, “Don’t think, shoot”: they implied that looking through the viewfinder was not always necessary; it was better to “shoot from the hip”.

“At first Pasquale was totally blocked,” recalls Christina. “It went against all of his principles of photography, learnt over years.” But he tried it and sparks flew. Suddenly, he felt he had something with which he could cast off the shackles of formality.

He contacted the Viennese odd-balls and discovered them to be two normal, non-photographers with an obsession. He and Christina were invited to join them on a trip to Havana with Lomo-lovers from around Europe, so they went and enjoyed what she recalls as, “without a doubt, the best trip of my life.

They were a highly varied mixture of people who nonetheless had something in common: a spontaneity, a freshness. That they were from different social backgrounds was irrelevant. I loved that.”

A connection had been made, and an idea popped up: “Why don’t we hold a Lomography World Congress in Madrid?” And somehow it happened. Somehow, in 1997 they persuaded RENFE to allow them to invade Atocha station and create a giant mural of photos over 100 metres long, featuring 60,000 pictures from around the globe. “It was a way of documenting the everyday life of people from all over the world, using the same tool. Unique points of view presented the same way with an amazing unity,” says Christina.

But what could be so special as to make strangers congregate in Madrid for no better reason than a little black object? Blame the General...

General Igor Petrowitsch Kornitzky, once right-hand man to the USSR Minister of Defence and Industry, that is. In 1982, he brought one of the new compact Japanese Cosina cameras to the head of LOMO – the Leningradskoye Optiko- Mechanichesckoye Obyedinenie (Leningrad Optical Mechanical Union). Its 27,000 workers principally made optics for military use such as missile sights, periscopes and night-vision goggles, but also tools for use in astronomy and medicine.

His proposition was that they create a similar camera, but with a few significant differences to make it suitable for military and espionage use—for copying secret plans for instance. It needed to be discreet, very tough, to function in poor light and have a somewhat wide angle. The optical genius, Professor Radionov, developed the Minitar lens, which is in truth the heart of the distinctive ‘Lomo look.’ In some magical way it seemed to suck in light and colour—and thus the Lomo Kompakt-Automat was born. In the end it turned out to be not just a great camera for the General but also an extremely practical one for Soviet citizenry—a camera ‘for the people.’

Mass production began, with 1,500 staff members dedicated to producing one million cameras in the ensuing decade, which were spread throughout the Communist world. They were given as presents to the military and bureaucrats. There were even customised versions for revolutionary anniversaries.

The moment the Berlin Wall fell, everything changed, however. People didn’t want clunky, ugly cameras that reminded them of the past. They wanted the seductive looks and famous names from West Germany and Japan. Suddenly unloved and unwanted, the LC-A started to pile up in warehouses all over Eastern Europe.

In 1992 a couple of Viennese students on a trip to Prague were browsing through the wares of a co-operative that sold supplies for schools. Amidst the exercise books and pencils, they came across the curious black cameras. The shopkeeper threw one in almost for free. They got some cheap film and played around, using the camera freely. But when they developed the films, they fell in love with what they saw. They returned to Prague to search for more for their friends.

In Vienna it remains a tradition for a group of people who share an interest to form a society—and a society has to have its rules. So once there were 20 friends playing with their Lomos, they decided—with conscious irony—to form the Lomographic Society, and with tongue deeply in cheek, drew up the ‘10 Rules of Lomography’. They bought up as many Lomos as they could find and sold them to anybody who was interested, which is how the ripples spread to Christina and Pasquale. The now ‘International Lomographic Society’ didn’t profit anybody involved, it was just a way of getting to know people. However, it began to take up so much time that its founders gave up their jobs to dedicate themselves to spreading the word.

They immediately encountered a major problem: LOMO had stopped making the camera when the USSR collapsed. The last batch had been produced in 1991. They approached the company about re-starting production, but their first letter was considered an April fool’s prank and promptly binned. They eventually managed to meet and convince the LOMO people of the seriousness of their proposition, but in the fast-changing world of the new Russia, it evoked little excitement. In

fact, the LC-A might have disappeared back into obscurity as a Cold War relic were it not for the personal intervention of the then Vice-Mayor of St. Petersburg of the time – an ambitious politician by the name of Vladimir Putin.

The deal was done, and a group of 60 old hands were put together for the complex task of once again assembling the 415 pieces that constituted this object-of-loathing-turned-object-of-desire. Each camera was constructed by hand over the course of a week; one thousand a month.

Meanwhile, Christina and Pasquale found that people were constantly ringing the bell of their studio wanting to get hold of the LC-A. The point was reached where it became so distracting, that they had to consider dropping the Lomo side of things. However they felt so bad about abandoning it that they decided to try to take Lomo ‘to the street’ to see what happened. This wasn’t such an obvious option given that, at that moment, the Lomo people in Vienna only had three products to sell (including the bizarre 4-lens ‘Supersampler’and the ‘Fisheye’): hardly a shelf-filling range.

So, the duo decided to mix them up with other items which had nothing to do with the cameras but shared their eccentric individualism, and also provided space to exhibit users’ photographs. There was no marketing plan except Shoeless Joe’s mantra from ‘Field of Dreams’, “Build it and they will come.” And come they did. As Christina says, “If we’d tried to do it in a calculated way, I’m sure it never would have worked. That’s the big mystery. At the beginning there were perhaps a total of 5,000 nutcases using Lomos. Today there are 300,000 users registered on the global website. So now, obviously, there is an element of marketing, but without losing the freshness.”

While the world has been waking up to Lomo, and Leningrad has returned to being St. Petersburg, problems have arisen. Many of the original staff have retired and it’s hard to find young people who want to learn the skills.

Meanwhile, salaries have quintupled and energy costs have soared. In truth, the Russians were losing money and the Lomo Society didn’t feel they could double the price to reflect the real costs. In the end, LOMO agreed to give over the construction of the camera to... China, of course—although LOMO’s Minitar lens is still used.

There’s no escaping the irony: A camera for the people is rejected by the East at the advent of widespread capitalism there, to be subsequently given new life by enthusiasts in the West. Eventually it falls into the hands of the next world superpower whose economic strength, emergent from a conflux of capitalist economics and communist politics, begins to challenge the entire western world.

But there remains a question: why would someone shell out €250 for an LCA and all the ensuing processing and printing when they could get a decent digital camera for the same price? Christina is clear. “You buy a digital camera. It has thousands of buttons. It does everything. You understand hardly any of its functions. Later you’re on the computer for hours. The process loses all its charm. It’s cold technology. They don’t have soul. The other problem is you lose your criteria. Instead of taking one photo, you take a hundred.” But she’s no Luddite, “Don’t get me wrong I’m not anti-digital. Digital is a wonderful tool to use in certain circumstances. In the studio we don’t use anything else any more,” she says.

Christina has a shop in Barcelona as well as Madrid, and there are a few more in other corners of the globe, along with a much larger range of rather bizarre cameras: the ‘Frog-Eye’, anyone? But it’s hardly a Zara-scale takeover.

“Lomography has grown a lot and the only way not to lose the original concept is to ensure that only true enthusiasts are involved. You have to live it,” she says.

CONTACTS:

Spanish website: www.lomospain.com

Global website: www.lomography.com

Madrid Shop

c/Echegaray 5,

tel: 91 369 1799

Barcelona Shop

Carrer Mirallers 2, esq. Vigatans – BORN,

tel: 93 319 7006

Photography by Peter Domankiewicz.

To see more visit www.lomohomes.com/RICITOSDEORO

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