What the hell is Lomography?

Posted on 4/01/2010 by UNITED PHOTO PRESS

It was in the early 1990s when two students in Vienna, Austria, discovered a small enigmatic Russian camera, the Lomo Kompakt Automat, and started a new style of artistic experimental photography of unorthodox snapshots.

In the blink of an eye the Lomographic message spread around the planet and people from North to South were screaming for Lomo LC-A’s. So they hopped on a plane, flew to St. Petersburg and negotiated a contract for the worldwide distribution of this fantastic little camera.

Then everything happened quickly for Lomography. We set up the 10 golden rules as our guiding principals, held numerous exhibitions, world congresses, parties and events. Mounted groundbreaking collaborations and projects, installed lomography.com as our communication hub, developed new products, films and accessories all while opening up Lomography Gallery Stores in metropolises worldwide.

What started out spontaneously as an artistic approach to photography in the Vienna underground scene developed into Lomography becoming an international socio-cultural movement using photography as a creative approach to communicating, absorb and capturing the world.

Today we are a globally active organization dedicated to experimental and creative visual expression, a playful combination of lo-tech and hi-tech and the amalgamation of a cultural institution with a commercial photographic and design company focussing entirely on the unique imagery, style and approach of analogue photography and its further development.