Lomography Toy Camera

Lomography: Toy Camera Movement

Lomography began in Vienna in 1991 when a group of art students discovered the Soviet LOMO LC-A camera - a compact, fully automatic 35mm camera manufactured in Leningrad from 1984 - and recognized its flaws as a visual language. The LC-A's automatic exposure often set incorrect values, its cheap lens vignetted heavily, and its color rendering was inaccurate by conventional standards. The students decided these were features rather than bugs and founded the Lomographic Society International to spread the gospel.

The LOMO LC-A and Its Characteristics

The LOMO LC-A (Lomo Compact Automat) was designed by the Leningrad Optical Mechanical Association as a Soviet version of the Cosina CX-2 - a Japanese compact camera. It featured a 32mm f/2.8 lens, zone focus (no rangefinder or autofocus), and a fully automatic exposure system that could not be overridden. The automatic system was optimistic about low-light capability, frequently underexposing in dim conditions and creating the dark, moody saturated results that became the lomographic signature.

The vignetted corners were a consequence of the small, single-element-plus-field-flattener lens design. The color cross-over - warm in highlights, cool in shadows, or vice versa - was an emulsion artifact that the camera's automatic metering made worse. Cross-processing (developing slide film in C-41 chemistry intended for negative film, or vice versa) amplified these characteristics to extremes: skin tones went green or purple, skies went yellow, shadows went cyan.

The Ten Commandments and the Movement

The Lomographic Society's 'Ten Golden Rules' formalized the aesthetic philosophy: always have your camera with you; use it day and night; photography is not interference in your life; try shooting from the hip; don't worry about the rules; approach the objects of your lomography as close as possible; don't think; do it fast; you don't have to know beforehand what you captured on film; and don't worry about any rules. These ten principles were as much a manifesto against technical perfectionism as a photography guide.

The movement popularized multiple-exposure photography, fisheye cameras, the Diana F+ (a Hong Kong toy camera from the 1960s), the Holga, and various other toy and specialist cameras. The Lomographic Society grew into a retail company selling cameras, film, and accessories, with physical stores in Vienna, New York, Berlin, London, and elsewhere.