Get attitude go Lomo
By SAMIRA SAHURI
If you see someone acting suspiciously, studying building corners and staring at street lamps, with a small black box in hand, he’s probably a member of a growing cult. But don’t call the police — the person is largely harmless despite his link with the Evil Empire and its now-dead Communism.
He is a Lomographer, a member of a little band of snap-happy people hooked on the unpredictable results produced by a Russian-made camera, and who curiously feel the need to match the curious behaviour of their Lomo.
“What the hell is LOMO?” is their proud slogan. The literal answer is the Leningrad Optical Mechanical Organization, now part of Russian tycoon Vladimir Potanin’s Interros group.
But lomographers have their own answer.
“A relentlessly clicking beastie threatening to overwhelm you with slightly insane impulses to capture the innate majesty of all things around you.”
The camera, which has no flash or zoom and no automatic shutter, is a relic of the former USSR, but it is more like caviar than vodka, they say.
The Lomo Compakt Automat or LC-A is definitely an acquired taste. And like connoisseurs of sturgeon eggs, Lomographers have an attitude and a lifestyle to go with their pursuit.
They consider themselves citizens of their own country, and have embassies around the world. They even have their own Manifesto, which they call the “10 Golden Rules”.
Twenty-six year old Ifzan Ibrahim is a Lomographic Society Malaysia Ambassador to this country. When he is not working as a graphic designer in Petaling Jaya, that is.
Ifzan and comrades Dzurina and Yati Dzulkhaini picked up lomography while studying overseas and set up the embassy in Malaysia about 18 months ago. The sisters are his fellow ambassadors.
“We are ambassadors because we do diplomatic work for our country, LOMO, and we spread the LOMO vibe. We conduct activities and exhibitions. The LOMO community in Malaysia has 300 strong supporters and growing. It’s quite an overwhelming response!” he says.
“LOMOs are mostly used by people who are inclined towards the arts — graphic designers, art students. It’s not a professional camera and it shouldn’t be your only camera. Only some people will appreciate it, not everyone.
“It’s alternative photography,” Ifzan declares.
If not alternative, then “weird” is probably what hawkers thought of a bunch of them last year when they descended on the Chow Kit wet market for a Lomo Treasure Hunt as part of an Arts Festival in the capital.
A chicken-rice hawker thought they were tourists, while brothel sisters (and brothers) shied away thinking they were the authorities working undercover. Many onlookers were bemused to see them shooting ordinary objects from dustbins and drains to underwear on drying lines, from all kinds of angles.
Armed with the little black LOMOs, they put brazen faces on their obsession and openly shot pictures from the hip, from below the waist and from arms stretched above their heads.
Some even looked through the viewfinder.
“The whole attitude is what is interesting; it’s not about composing. It’s about pictures that represent your everyday life — and the unpredictability of the pictures that will come out,” said young graduate James Tan, 22.
Golden Rule #8 says: “You don’t have to know beforehand what you’ve captured on film.”
Golden Rule #9 adds: “… afterwards either”.
And Golden Rule #10 wraps the philosophy up very nicely by saying: “Don’t worry about the rules”.
That is as far removed from Russian Communism as it can be of course. You see, Lomography reveres individualism and scorns rules, especially that of “good photography”.
In just over a decade, it has gone from an underground student phenomenon to a cult movement with some 500,000 members around the world. Their ranks include such celebrities as rock musician Brian Eno, designer Helmut Lang, and actor Robert Redford. Some even claim Yasser Arafat has been seen with one, never mind it could have been just a plastic toy camera.
The LOMO was born in 1982, and according to one tale, because the Soviet Union wanted a mass-produced camera of its own.
The camera was made for “the pleasure and glory of the Soviet population. It was decided — every respectable Communist should have a LOMO of his own,” says the Lomography Society International.
As it turned out, with the LOMO, they would document “the last gasps of Soviet Communism, and the occasional beach vacation on the Black Sea”.
It was a group of Austrian students on holiday in newly-free Czechoslovakia roughly 10 years after the camera’s introduction who began the craze for the LOMO’s quirky ways.
When they developed — or “washed” as we Malaysians like to say — the negatives, they found pictures that were randomly blurry or vivid, under/over-exposed, and pale hued or garishly saturated.
The Lomographic Society grew so fast that the founders, Wolfgang Stranziger and Mathias Fiegl, went on a mission to St Petersburg to persuade the mayor to get the LOMO plant there to increase production.
The Soviet Datuk Bandar they spoke to? None other than Vladimir Putin, who has gone on to become President of the Russian Federation.
And the manufacturing group, which makes other optical equipment such as microscopes and night vision binoculars for civilians, has even finally turned a profit last year after bleeding red rubles for years.
It is not clear though, how much of the turnaround is due to the success of the camera, and how much to the “special productions” which is an often-used euphemism for goods with military applications.
Still, in 1997, sales of LOMO Kompacts accounted for roughly one-sixth of its export revenue.
A Lomo owner myself, I can assure you it can transform everyday things into something completely unexpected. But it is the feeling of being possessed when having a Lomo in hand that gets me every time.
You act totally on impulse, simply clicking at anything and everything, and then fervently hope that there will be that special image. You go through rolls of film in no time, and you get ecstatic if you end up with just that one shot.
“When I first got my camera I snapped pictures of all things around me from the time I woke up until I went to sleep at night,” says graphic designer Khairi Asmat, 28.
“I almost gave up. The first two months I was suffering. I couldn’t get any good stuff.”
Ironically, the Lomo effect itself sometimes makes it tougher to get the negatives developed than to take the right shot.
“Developers think the pictures are spoilt. They say it’s overexposed, underexposed or camera ‘rosak’,” complains Khairi.
For the uninitiated, that is how most of lomographs look — badly snapped photographs.
The LOMO’s “strength” lies in its glass Minitar lens, which captures colours well even in low and dim light. The lens also produces serious vignetting, or a falloff in light around the edges of the image.
In bright light, the pictures can be as sharp and focused as those of normal, point-and-click cameras. But difficult lighting conditions is what brings out the full LOMO effect.
The colour saturation and the need to keep the camera shutter open for a longer time in low light combine to produce the alien, strange, and if you’re lucky, truly spectacular lomographs.
Then again, lomographers do not treasure the same qualities in their pictures as photographers do from the products of their expensive single lens reflex (SLR) cameras. “Focus? Sharpness? Perspective? Who needs them?” they ask.
“The SLR is about composing the perfect picture, having proper lighting and waiting for that moment. You know how you want the picture to look. With the LOMO, it’s spontaneous and you never know what you’ll get. It’s a surprise every time,” says young film-maker Eddie Lau, 24, who doesn’t own a LOMO but wants to get one.
This is what has triggered a debate, mostly on photography websites, on whether the LOMO’s success is just the result of a slick marketing drive.
Afterall, it is the movement’s unique lifestyle element that makes it stand out. Lomographers have Lomohomes where they build Lomowalls to show their lomographs. They held a LomOlympics three years ago and a Lomography World Congress last year. There was even a Hallomoween in Singapore in 2001.
“Events are truly the life-blood of the Lomographic movement, distinguished by their unique use of exhibition space, non-stop party spirit and all night visuals. Dive in — get the lowdown on all global events and if you can’t find one near your city, get off your rocking chair and organise one!!” says lomography.com.
The tricky thing is there are no rules about what the lomograph should look like.
“It’s very subjective. Different people appreciate different pictures,” says accounting graduate Azam Shah Hanipah, 21.
“If half the shots from each roll are blurry and the other half are okay, you’re on the right track,” says 27-year-old designer Nurhadzlena Mohd Hadzir.
“LOMO captures the mood of the scene. It’s very raw and can be used with art, like painting.”
“Rasa berdebar-debar, apa jadinya gambar ni?” says Azam.
“My favourite subject are heads — people’s, dummy’s, close-ups,” says Nurhadzlena.
“I usually take lomographs around Taman Melawati where I live and the neighbouring hills. Clouds, sun, scenery, road signs and my dogs,” says James.
“New lomographers usually face problems getting the right focusing range. You will have to acquire that skill. (Then) point and shoot. There are no rules and no right way. It’s up to the individual’s creativity,” says Ambassador Ifzan.
What else is there to do when your coaches tell you the camera has only four focus options — near, far, very far and infinity. Its charm extends to not needing to know anything about apertures, shutter speeds, or even composition. Really, you need to forget about normal photography and just click, click, click.
