I love the lomo despite it's design faults and questionable cult marketing. I love it because it takes better pictures than any of the other cameras i own. The pictures always come out colourful, lot's of contrast, it takes pictures in the dark, and it's easy to use when drunk, fucking ace.
Lomo stands for leningradskoye optiko mechanichesckoye obyedinenie, a company that have been around since 1914. situated in the city of St. Petersburg.
Most importantly in 1983 they made a small unreliable camera called the LOMO-compact or LCA. the LCA has been around for years and production was almost stopped completely, fortunately a few young european men, they were german or something, realised the potential of the camera and set about securing its future, a task that took them around russia including a meeting with former KGB spy Vladimir Putin whom in August 1999 was named Russian prime minister. cool. anyway so lomo said we can't shift enough of them, and these guys said easy we'll just make it cool and kitsh, the japanese will love it and before long you can sell millions of your over priced unreliable russian tins over the entire planet. the idea was so good there are now lomo embassy and galleries just about every where. |