How Imperfect Analog Lomo Photography Inspired and then Was Pushed From Instagram

In the 1980s, photography was a deliciously physical, analog and often imperfect experience. In the hundred years or so since its invention, it was accessible to many, albeit through a deeply physical process. Film had to be obtained and inserted into the camera, then cranked and wound. A single test shot taken to check the action. The first photo on the reel was often a pair of shoes. Then, you would take the photos, hoping the focus, exposure and angles were good. Once the reel was finished, you rushed off to have it developed. Or, if you had the facilities, you developed it yourself over a series of hours in a malodorous darkroom. The results were exciting and sometimes strange. Visual effects marred the chemical process and changes in focus, angle or shutter-speed created results that were sometimes unexpected. 

Throughout the 1980s, manufacturers in Europe, Asia and America rushed to enhance the optical capabilities of their cameras, seeking ever sharper images. However, one summer in 1991, this race toward perfect analog photography was challenged by a different movement, one that started by accident. The story goes, that, in 1991, a group of travelling Viennese students noticed a basic plastic camera in a shop in Prague. They purchased the camera and took many rolls of film. 

After returning to Vienna and developing the film, they realised the photos were deeply affected by flaws in the camera’s manufacturing process. Chromatic lens aberrations, light leakage and other challenges meant that the developed photographs had darkened edges, unusual colours and other distortions. Rather than discard the imperfections, the students embraced the aesthetic and decided to import the cameras to sell them in the West. The Lomo photography movement (otherwise known as “lomography”) was born. As noted in Revenge of Analog by David Sax; 

“‘Lomography is a fast, immediate and unashamed form of artistic expression…which instructed others to (1) take their camera everywhere, (2) use it anytime, (3) shoot from random angles, (4) shoot up close, (5) shoot without thinking, (6) shoot quickly , (7) embrace the unpredictability of shots before, (8) and after, (9) embrace the camera as a part of life, and (10) always ignore the rules.’” (Revenge of Analog)

The camera the students had found was the Lomo Kopakt Automat (also known as the LC-A). The LC-A was in turn inspired by a simple Japanese compact camera called the Cosina CX-1, it was mass-produced by a Soviet company looking to provide a camera to the everyday person in the Soviet Union. Initially, the founders of the Lomo movement hand carried bulk purchased cameras into the West. However, disaster struck in 1996, when the Russian company responsible for producing the camera was going to discontinue production. Intervention by the fervent community members encouraged Lomo Optics to continue production. It wasn’t until 2005 that the Lomo movement had to assume production responsibility for the Lomo LC-A, with the Russian manufacturer halting production for good. In 2005, the Lomo movement released the Lomo LC-A+, a Chinese copy of the Russian copy of the original Japanese camera. 

The LC-A was not the only camera embraced by the Lomo movement. In the same decade that the LC-A appeared in Russia, the Holga, another inexpensive plastic camera appeared in China. The Holga was a chunky square camera with a thin body shell and a simple single aperture lens. It suffered from many of the same flaws (or artistic benefits) found in the LC-A. The Holga is rather important to the story, so let’s keep it in mind. 

Though deeply tied to analog film and camera, lomography also integrated itself into into the online world. In 1994, the movement launched their own website to promote their ideas. Then in 2000 they launched a community portal for members to scan and upload their analogue photos for display online, on their own ‘LomoWalls.’ Their movement continued to grow. 

The year 2000 also marked another critical event in photography which would lead to far-reaching effects across the world. Stanford University student, Kevin Systrom, arrived in Europe to study photography and as part of his studies, his photography tutor convinced him to try the Holga (of Lomo fame). Systrom was entranced and used the camera extensively. Some of the fascination with the quirky camera must have followed Systrom back from Europe, for later he was to create an online photo sharing network called Burbn, which allowed people to share photos taken on their phones.  Later, he and co-founder Mike Krieger decided to add another key feature; a set of photo filters. Burbn was relaunched and became the photography application we now know as Instagram. 

Knowing the lineage of ideas, from the LC-A through to the lomography photo sharing site, it’s easy to see where Instagram’s early, square framed and imperfect filters originated from. With phone cameras on the rise during the early 2000s, Instagram enabled the wider audience - who at that point had only basic ‘point and shoot’ camera skills - to transform mediocre photos into works of retro art, simply by selecting and applying a filter. 

The early days of Instagram, just ten years ago, were full of photography that still echoed the experimentation and inspiration behind the Lomo movement;  photographs that embraced random angles, strange filters and a search for self expression. As noted in Revenge of Analog; 

“From the blurred images to the saturated filters, randomly placed shots, and even the practice of sharing your images online in social networks, the vernacular of modern smartphone photography (especially Instagram) is almost a textbook adoption of Lomography’s ten principles.” (Revenge of Analog)

But it’s here that Instagram and the Lomo photography movement diverge. Instagram allows users to directly share their photos online, either via Instagram’s own site, or onwards to other social media networks like Facebook. In contrast, the Lomo network has always required users to take photographs, develop them and then manually scan them for upload. The physical steps add delays and friction to the process. 

In the ten years since its release, Instagram has also moved away from the values and aesthetic of the Lomo movement that inspired it. It has focused on creating a platform that encourages a strange surreal perfection that defies reality. The retro filters that were initially present on Instagram have slowly disappeared, to be replaced with tools that emulate effects more common to those found in modern lifestyle magazines. Photo feeds are driven by algorithms, which by their design preference popularity. Popular accounts can attract advertising dollars to promote products. There are whole businesses based on selling tips or even fake bot-powered “followers” to users who yearn to become instagram celebrities. 

The most popular members of Instagram, through their use of clever photography and post-processing, portray lifestyles that can never be obtained - even by the people in the photos. A single image can require hours of preparation, makeup and post-processing. They are alter reality. All of this is pretty much the opposite of the Lomo movement. Lomo photography may have inspired one of the fastest growing visual, social networks in the world, but in the end, the analog imperfection that it represented doesn’t fit with the perfect world being packaged and sold every day through Instagram. 

All of this is by design. At its core, the Instagram arms race of hyperreal popularity is based on a deep and clear economic incentive. The desire to share experiences, to express an artistic sentiment, to understand what it is to be human; these are all heartwarming, but they are not good at raising capital, delivering advertising or greasing the wheels of consumerism. In order to be more valuable, the ideas behind Lomo photography have been pushed out of Instagram. What is left behind is all the more shallow for it. 

References

History of Lomography. Retrieved November 2019, from https://www.lomography.com/about/history

Dowling, Stephen (2017) The simple cult camera that inspired Instagram. BBC. Retrieved November 2019, from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171113-the-toy-camera-that-inspired-instagram 

Richmond, Shane (2011) Lomography: the digital photo sceptics strike back. The Telegraph. Retrieved November 2019, from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8712254/Lomography-the-digital-photo-sceptics-strike-back.html 

Sax, David (2016) Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter. Public Affairs: USA. 

Camera Photo by Pixelillo [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)]