In Soviet Russia, picture takes you!
With a slogan like "The Future of Analog" one has to take "the thinker" stance and ponder: The future of what? The company that proudly states this is none other than Lomography. If you've been following our blog, we still hold film with high regard. Unfortunately, most of the news we hear about film is the bad kind, and yet this does not discourage the dedicated film shooters all over the world. It's not that film users are gluttons for punnishment, it's moreso a matter of preference and keeping a tradition alive. Lomography is one of the few companies out there that is attempting to breath some life into a dying medium. Technically they aren't introducing anything new, instead they're offering fun ways of providing analog photography for new and old photographers alike. With the resurgence of "retro" (Thanks to Instagram), there's a large wave willing to leave their digital at home for a plastic camera. So where did the "future of analog" come from?
It all started 20 years ago...everything good seems to come out of the early 90's. During a trip to Prague, Matthias Fiegl and a few of his college friends found a secondhand 1984 Lomo Kompact Automat camera by chance of fate. The tiny camera was Cosina CX-1 doppelganger manufactured by Lomo, a Russian arms and optical outlet. Since there was such a high demand for new electronic cameras in the early 90's, the LC-A they found cost only 10 roubles (well bellow the US Dollar). Quickly, they found that the images they haphazardly shot featured lush colors and a strange dreamlike quality. Shortly after, they created the official-sounding Lomographic Society International which acted as a non-profit organization used to exhibit "lomography".
Lomo Red Scale Film
When people saw these quirky images, the demand for these once-forgotten cameras began to rise and thus called for semi-shady camera smuggling excursions to supply the demand. As a way of giving back to the community, they wrote an analog manifesto entitled "The 10 Golden Rules" which basically states: Bring your camera everywhere and don't be afraid to get messy, make mistakes and have fun. Right after they began to celebrate, Lomography hit a large hurtle. Lomo manufacturers ceased production of the LC-A camera that they were selling. Somehow they convinced both the directors and Vladimir Putin to continue making their prized camera. After some time they just gave them the blueprints so that they could outsource in China to make an improved replica dubbed the LC-A+. Since then they've created a whirlwind of a following and introduced many faithful reproductions of past classics like the Holga and Diana. Besides making the cameras of the past something much more accessible for the newer generations, Lomography expanded their line by producing cameras like the Fisheye and Sprocket Rocket that helped extend the already vast range of creativity of film.
The Iconic Diana F+
Today these cameras have become more than a tool to explore photography, they're an accessory. Applications like Instagram actually inspire some to try analog, instead of just mimicking the look. A filter on the popular app was even named after the company before they asked them to change it to "Lo-fi". Thanks to this craze, trendy stores like Urban Outfitters keep ample stock of their products so that hipsters along the globe can decorate their rooms with ironic square images of a faded blue sky or something. In response to the ever-dwindling stock of film, they even decided to start making their own film. We had the pleasure to review their film some time ago (mostly for fun rather than science) and we were really pleased with the results. Although the idea of an analog revolution is realistically a pipe dream, its impressive how well they're doing when the titans like kodak and fuji are just about giving up.
If you shoot film, Lomography is almost unavoidable, but they've done all this practically by taking a lot of chances. There may be a great wall separating the purists from the casuals, but anyone trying to keep a dying medium like film alive should be commended. As for a the "future of analog"...well, we don't know if it really has much of a future left, hence why we're sacrificing precious hot pocket freezer space to make room our favorite slide film. Pessimistic as it may seem, film will always have a celebrated history that will be shared with future generations to come.