I've shot an Olympus XA2 compact since 1981. It cost, if Alzheimer hasn't completely done for my marbles, I think just shy of £90, with its A11 flash and 'presentation' box. It was, in the shop ISTR more expensive than the 'entry-level' OM10 sat on the shelf next to it. It was one of the most expensive 'consumer' cameras of it's era; there was little in the shop any more expensive you couldn't swap lenses on, and an awful lot you could that were a heck of a lot cheaper..... it was NOT a low cost, low quality mass market camera..... just small.
Forty years on, and it GRATES when I see it describes as 'Lomo' on usually US based web-sites, for no other reason than they found one in a junk-shop for $5....
And here-in is the perversion..... thirty years ago, there were a few counter-cultures in photography; My Grandfather raved about his Kodak Retinette... it was a 35mm camera, he could use this 'cheap' movie film, and get more than 12 pictures to a roll, more they could be in COLOUR! Admittedly no one ever got to see them because they were on slide film, and the projector bulb had always blown if any-one ever stuck around long enough for him to set up the projector screen, and Gran hadn't moaned that he was pulling the curtains down.... if in deed, he hadn't been side tracked by that, and spent most of the day looking for a 3/8th's BA screw to fix the rail, instead... but I detract.....
On average there was about one camera per household. 35mm was revered for the 'quality'; Kids may have been given a plastic 120 cartridge brownie to play with at Christmas, or take photo's on the school-trip. The average household though took less than forty photo's a year, and films could be left in cameras almost decades between photo's! The main family camera only coming out on the main family holiday or celebration, and Dad' usually spending hours setting up a 'posed' picture for it.
110, taking the market by storm in the 1970's offered 'cheap' film, that you people could afford to be less precious about, and cheap cameras, they could let the wife and kids play with... and probably has a greater contribution to popular mass photography than anything until widgetal and camera-phones came along.
But gave rise to the 'Just shoot it' counter-culture. Tale photo's see what you get, anything is better than nothing. Meanwhile.... and I think that psychedelic music and associated recreational pharmaceuticals are not entirely blame-less.... but as counter-point to the enormous number of classically posed people pictures like wot Dad took, 'effect' became something ever so more aplauded.... and we saw the ride of the Cokin filter, with prism effects and rainbows and stuff, all over-laid opon what were usually other side ho-him phorto's.... and the 'cheap' wobbly plastic lens light-lean prone 'kiddie' cameras that gave these sort of effects randomly and without filter started to get interest as the aberrations were 'sold' as 'art'.. and 'Just Shoot it' philosophy encompased this, and we got what was variousely known as 'Serendipity-Photo' or 'Punk-Photography'.. take a cheap talentless camera, go shoot, and see what you get... then call that 'effect'... and say it was your intend all along!!!!
1990's.... the Berlin wall fell... these sort of alternative movements had grown and as a uni-student at the time, I saw gain great reverence... sort of akin to when my 16 year old lad came home in ripped jeans and trucker belts from the Boutique in town, and tried using Nirvana 'Come-as-you-Are' lyrics to explain why and 'old crusty' who'd gone clubbing in the ripped jeans that were the only clean thing in the laundry pile at the time, 'wouldn't get it maa-aa-aan" but still..... Post Thaturite ideals of 'stick a badge on it and flog it to the masses' prevailed, and former soviet planned economy factories, under threat of closure from EU environmental legislation, got bought up by Prague students on the make, and their products given a huge 'added value' from a 'LOMO' lable...... hmmmmm
Which got so perverted from the initial punk-photo-ideals of just shooting.... that the high end ultra expensive Olympus XA2 that was, in 1981 offered as being as convenient and pocketable as a 110 instamatic, but offering 35mm rivaling image quality.. SUDDENLY gets derogated to being the equal of a plastic rusian Brownie copy wi9th an unprenounceable name, even is you can translate the crylic charecters!!!!
What do I think of Lomo!?!
I have to say, that as a marketing ploy, its effing fan-fooking-tastic! Taking effectively value-less party cracker ribbish made in the former soviet union, transferring manufacture to china and lowering QC levels even further, and then selling it to the world with a BADGE at a 'premium' HAS to be a stroke of pure genius!!!
It is remarkeable... truly astounding even! WHY didn't I think of that thirty years ago when I was at college instead of trying to flog fancy pad-locks for motor-bike front discs!!!!
As a movement? Perversion layered on perversion really!!! Like No1 Son trying to convince me that a pair of over-priced ripped jeans and trucker chains "I is wot I where ma-an!" and blowing my hi-fi speakers putting on the latest "Dance of Death" album by that oh-so-cult rock-band Iron-Maiden (shrug!) turning the bass full up and then the volume..... and trying to tell me that I'm too old to understand...... maybe I am.... millenials!?! I really just DONT get them.... especailly when they try re-inventing stuff from my yoof, and giving it a twist......
I went to a party not long ago, and the kids had taken over the Hi-Fi.... they were the only ones that could program the play list!!!! I was subjected to "Fight for your Right" by the Beastiue Boys....... the computer-programmer who'd put this on, and the teen-age relative who had turned it up, were rather aghast, me, old crumblie, was SINGING ALONG! Well, it was sort of the sound-track to my 5th year at school, and the 12" single.... yeah, how many remember them? Go on hands up, show your crumblie-ness!!! Was passed round the playground to get scratched to high heck between mocks for us all to make a low rent copy off on Boots own compact-cassette, over the top of last weeks top 40 off Radio1!!! However.. I am not sure who's shock was greater... these 'Kids' that I could sing along to the song... or mine.. that they revered such tripe as a 'Classic'.... yeah.. well it was an anthem, yup I suppose it did make a statement of its time.... but it was never exactly a GREAT, was it?
Thinking back... I was a little surprised when I was about 12 and got my own record player, and asked by my Gran to record all her old records to tape so she could listen to them again, coming accross Eddie Cochran 'Come-on-Every-body'... and I suppose she had a similar moment of wonder that I so liked that bit of pop-art from her yoof... but still.....
THAT is I think where LOMO leads us...... to me it IS a fantastic bit of marketing over manufacture.... beyond that, as a movement... well? It is whatever you would like it to be... whether that';s an over priced Holga or a cheap Olympus XA2.. whether its the effect of light leaks and rainbow lenses, or the fantastic resolution and reproduction of a 120 roll film Lubitel....
The brand, and the movement and the millenial geek-nicks 'discovering' this 'old-fashioned analogue photo stuff' probably deserve some consideration for helping keep halide film alive and in the popular conscious...... what they do with it? That remains much more debateable.......
But, I dont think that 'LOMO' can even be defined.. it's an amorphous blob in photography, that is shaped by who-ever whenever to be an excuse for whatever interests them at the time.. as such, some of what comes out of it is interesting, some thought provoking, whether its any good or not, though remains in question, and 'just' beause some-one has slapped a brand name on it doesn't mean its going to be... in fact, most often where thats all there is to it, it very much isn'tt.
Good photo's remain good photo's, however they were made....