Link: BBC NEWS | Europe | Lomos: New take on an old classic.
Lomos: New take on an old classic
By Adam Blenford
BBC News, London
"Vladimir Putin is many things: former KGB agent, confident world leader and keen judo player to name but three.
"His role as a saviour of experimental photography is less well known.
(((Great lede, eh? Wow!)))"Yet a bizarre-sounding meeting in 1995 between Mr Putin and a group of Austrian photography experimentalists today underpins a growing photographic movement that occupies the narrow space between the worlds of art and commerce.
"Then deputy mayor of St Petersburg, the man who would soon be Russian president gave an audience to the Austrians to hear their pleas.
"They had recently started selling refurbished Soviet-era cameras from the Leningrad Optics and Mechanics Association (Lomo, in Russian) to enthusiasts around the world.
"Business was growing, but Lomo wanted out of the deal. The Austrians needed Mayor Putin to bail them out. They succeeded.
"Lomo got a tax break, Lomo's Director Ilya Klebanov eventually became a deputy prime minister, and the Austrian company, the Lomographic Society, stayed in business.
Enthusiasm
"Today, Lomography - motto: "Don't think, just shoot" - has an estimated one million followers around the world.
"These devotees, or Lomographers, as they call each other, use old-fashioned "analogue" cameras to make photographs, or Lomographs, that seem a world away from the crisp, under-saturated images produced by many modern digital cameras.
"By contrast, Lomo images are a swish of soft focus and vibrant colours, all captured on film and developed in a lab. Just like the old days.
Except it's not just like the old days.
With an active online community that uploads 6,000-10,000 pictures each day, and 500,000 Lomographers around the world who receive regular e-mail newsletters from the Lomographic Society, this is a thoroughly modern twist on an old-fashioned pursuit. (...)
For the past week the Lomographic Society, now a highly-profitable worldwide enterprise which controls the entire world of Lomo from the cameras on sale to the online communities where the pictures are shared, has been holding a grand-sounding meeting in the heart of London. (((The hobbyists seized the means of production. The fans now own the works. Hmmmm.)))
