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Lomography - Don't Think Just Shoot

oldwhitewood

oldwhitewood

Member
Joined
11 Jul 2007
Messages
356
For a while now I've been fascinated with the whole Lomo scene, truth be told I own a few film cameras of that ilk myself, a Holga, Vivitar Ultra Wide Slim, Smena, and a Holga 135 too. I've never bought a Lomo LC-A mainly because of the price of them for what they are!!! But to me the point of it seems to be that all the power is in the camera, all the creativity is coming from the liberation found when using a cheap russian camera with a technically dodgy lens. It's very much a cool underground type of cult movement, but I can't help admitting whenever I see a collection of photographs taken by someone with a Lomo camera I'm usually pretty impressed. Do you think this is anything to do with the equipment or by chance are these guys just naturally artistic photographers? Perhaps it's the subject matter, to me living in the UK if I see a shot of an american street it instantly evokes certain feeling, whereas to someone who lived on that same street and saw it everyday, it's just a street you know?
 
Well I guess if you enjoy the images produced by photographers using this camera then it's something that appeals to your aesthetic sense and is undeniable. There are audiophiles out there that swear LPs played on a good turntable sound better than CDs. Then there was the punk movement where people decided it was cool and artistic to wear shoddy clothes, to get bad haircuts and to listen to music played by inept musicians. I just don't get it. I reckon you can get similar results with an old Kodak Instamatic. I mean, some of the images I see in lomography galleries remind me of the shoddy images I used to take and then threw away as they were deemed unacceptable. Maybe others get a sense of nostalgia when viewing these images. That's cool too. 8)

In any case the rendering of an image is in the skill of the photographer who understands his craft as well as the limitations of his gear. If there is liberation in gear it's that it would allow you to get what you are looking for without interfering with your workflow or annoying you. Seventy years on no one has produced images that can compare with Ansel's work despite all the advances in photography during that time.

Cheers,
 
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