Lomography — a genre of spontaneous photography and the international movement that grew up around it.[1][2] At its heart is the Soviet compact camera LOMO Compact Automat (LC-A), which produces sharp, high-contrast images with pronounced vignetting; the name is backronymed as LOve and MOtion.[3][1][4] In Nizhny Novgorod, works by local lomographers were shown to the public for the first time in November 2009.[3]
Nizhny Novgorod lomographers
On 4 November 2009, the café of the Orlyonok cinema at Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, 39a — one block below Minin Square — hosted the opening of an art project called "Theatre of Miniatures": an exhibition of photo miniatures and a youth section, "With That Camera," featuring photographs by Nizhny Novgorod residents working with miniature LOMO, Diana, and Holga cameras.[3] The exhibition ran until 7 December 2009.[3]
The "With That Camera" section featured Anna Lyapaeva, Denis Shashkin, Yekaterina Bandakova, Inna Sorokina, Maks Dyakov, and Marina Yeriskina.[3] The main body of the photo miniatures exhibition comprised works by Aleksandr Ivasenko, Natalya Plankina, Ivan Belov, Andrey Skvortsov, Ilya Bubis, Sergey Dremin, Valeriy Shibanov, Dmitriy Taranov, Aleksandr Krupnik, Dmitriy Alekseyev, Kseniya Lyadova, Ivan Bykov, Aleksey Panov, and others.[3]
The organizers deliberately dispensed with the "lomo wall" conventional at lomo exhibitions — a mosaic panel assembled from a multitude of frames — because what mattered to them was showing not only the lomo style itself, but also the possibility of producing a genuinely artistic photograph with "toy" means.[3]
Lomography has long been nothing new for Nizhny Novgorod, yet the results of local lomographers' experiments had never before been presented to the public.
Where the camera came from
The impetus for the LC-A's creation was the international photo and film equipment exhibition in Cologne in 1980: Igor Kornitsky, Deputy Minister of the Defense Industry, was given a Japanese Cosina CX-1 as a gift, and it was decided to produce a domestic equivalent.[5] Development was entrusted to the special design bureau of the LOMO association; the creative team was led by chief designer Mikhail Grigoryevich Kholomyansky, who worked on the camera for eighteen months.[5][4]
The Japanese model was disassembled and all 450 parts were replicated, but the electronic shutter could not be reproduced — a new one had to be created from scratch, the FZPE-10; the designers Kholomyansky and M. P. Biyushkin received an inventor's certificate. The Minitar-1 lens, with a focal length of 32 millimetres and an aperture of f/2.8, was developed under the direction of Valery Tarabukin and later reworked by Lev Sakin.[5][4]
In spring 1982, six prototypes underwent testing, and an interdepartmental committee recommended the camera for production; the first commercial batch was manufactured in 1983.[5] A batch of 6,000 units, each bearing a brass badge with red enamel, was presented to delegates at the 27th Congress of the CPSU.[5][4] Output reached 1.7 million units per year; the camera was exported to Vietnam, Cuba, and the countries of Eastern Europe, and from 1985 export batches were sold under the ZENITH brand.[5]
Movement
In 1991, Viennese students Matthias Fiegl and Wolfgang Stranzinger bought a LOMO Compact for twelve dollars and, captivated by its distinctive style, registered a cultural association called the International Lomographic Society, headquartered in Vienna.[3][1][2] For two years after their first exhibition, the founders bought up cameras wholesale in Eastern Europe and resold them to followers for one hundred dollars.[1]
On 1 April 1994, the Society sent LOMO a fax requesting the resumption of production — the factory took it for an April Fools' joke.[1] An agreement was nonetheless reached, and the Society became the exclusive worldwide distributor of the LC-A.[1] In the summer of 2000, a lomographic embassy opened in Saint Petersburg, and in 2001 it jointly organized with the factory the first international conference of lomographic ambassadors.[3]
In 2004, production of the LOMO Compact in Saint Petersburg ceased: 1,300,000 cameras had been produced over twenty-one years.[1] Since 2005, the manufacturing rights have belonged to the Society, and a simplified version, the LC-A+, is produced in China.[1]
Chronicle
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1980 | exhibition in Cologne; decision to develop a domestic compact camera[5] |
| 1981–1982 | M. G. Kholomyansky leads development; FZPE-10 shutter created[5][4] |
| spring 1982 | six prototypes recommended for production[5] |
| 1983 | first commercial batch of the "LOMO Compact"[5] |
| 1985 | first export batch under the ZENITH brand[5] |
| 1986 | 6,000 cameras presented to delegates of the 27th Congress of the CPSU[5][4] |
| 1991 | Figel and Stanzinger buy a camera for $12; lomography is born[3][1][2] |
| 1994 | the society's fax to LOMO; production resumes[1] |
| 2000 | lomographic embassy in [3][1]Saint Petersburg |
| 2001 | first international conference of lomographic ambassadors[3] |
| 4 November – 7 December 2009 | Nizhny Novgorod: "With That Camera" section at the Orlyonok cinema — first public screening of Nizhny Novgorod lomographers[3] |
| 2004 | production in Saint Petersburg closed; total of 1.3 million cameras produced[1] |
| 2005 | rights held by the lomographic society; LC-A+ manufactured in China[1] |
How They Shoot
The code of shooting practice fits into a dozen points and boils down to one: don't get in the way of your own thinking.[1] A Lomographer always carries a camera and shoots at any time of day or night, gets up close to the subject or fires from the hip without looking through the viewfinder, acts quickly, and makes no attempt to predict what will come out on the film.[1] The final point of the code suggests forgetting the rules themselves.[1]
Hence the look of a Lomo frame: dynamic composition, natural scenes, bold compositional choices, dark corners, and high contrast — everything that in conventional photography would be considered a defect.[4][2]
See also
- LOMO Compact Automat
- Russian Museum of Photography
- Karelin Andrey Osipovich
- Bolshaya Pokrovskaya: Two Centuries of the Main Street
Sources
- printservice.pro — Lomography, Photography, Lomo Compact-Automat (archive)
- fotosklad.ru — Fotosklad Expert — Lomography: history, principles, shooting techniques (archive)
- web.archive.org — Lomography and photo miniatures exhibition opens at Nizhny Novgorod cinema — NewsNN — Lomography and photo miniatures exhibition opens at Nizhny Novgorod cinema (November 5, 2009) (archive)
- liveviewer.ru — LOMO LK-A (LOMO LC-A, Compact-Automat) review with photo examples — Go and shoot! (archive)
- printservice.pro — The history of the "LOMO-Compact" camera — The history of the LOMO Compact camera (archive)