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Thursday, November 22, 2012

Wonderful Russia!

Wonders never cease! Not all wonders of the recent past exist only in  Steampunk Museums! Film cameras exist where - Kodak having gone extinct - the old ways yet endure:   other regions of the globe, which are not quite so over-zealous to embrace the new.



From the BBC   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20434270
It was a nervous time for film photography when digital cameras took off in the 1990s, and seemed set to take over entirely. But with some help from Vladimir Putin - then deputy mayor of St Petersburg - the little Lomo camera became a retro cult classic, and showed film had a bright future.
In 1991, a group of Austrian art students on a trip to nearby Prague found, in a photographic shop, a curious little camera.
Black, compact and heavy, the camera was rudimentary. The lens was protected by a sliding cover. Loading, focusing and rewinding were all done by hand.

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...
Adopt the new, but keep a foot in the Ancient. Wonderful Rus!
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