Lomo et Poutine
[…] The little camera was the Lomo LC-A - Lomo Kompact Automat, built in Soviet-era Leningrad by Leningrad Optics and Mechanics Association (Lomo) - and very soon a craze was born. It was an analogue Instagram in the days before digital photography.
This Lomo craze may have ended up helping save film photography from an untimely end.
In 1992, the students set up Lomographic Society International, exhibiting shots taken on unwanted Lomos they had bought up from all over Eastern Europe.
Then, in the mid-90s, having exhausted the supply of left-over Lomos gathering dust in Budapest, Bucharest or East Berlin, they went to the camera’s manufacturers - still making optics in St Petersburg - and persuaded them to restart production. The negotiations were helped along by the support of the city’s then deputy mayor, Vladimir Putin.
On Friday 23 November, Lomography is celebrating its 20th anniversary, by starting a series of parties in some of its 36 stores around the world. […]
BBC News, Stephen Dowling: “Did the Lomo camera save film photography?”
Blah ? Touitter !