In the early 1990s, as a result of the fall of the Iron Curtain, a bunch of students living in Viennna came across the Lomo Kompakt Automat – the iconic LC-A.
The autofocus, wide-angle lens camera was easy to use and produced distinct effects such as vibrant colours and strong vignetting. Affectionados were inspired to take artistic photographs in new experimental and spontaneous ways.
By late 1992 one of the students wrote the Lomography Manifesto and shortly afterwards the 10 Golden Rules of Lomography were penned:
- Take your camera everywhere you go
- Use it any time – day or night
- Lomography is not an interference in your life, but part of it
- Try the shot from the hip
- Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible
- Don’t think
- Be Fast
- You don’t have to know beforehand what you captured on film
- Afterwards either
- Don’t worry about any rules
Everything was now in place for the Lomographic Society to be founded and put on its first exhibition. Before the exhibition opened the society sent the manifesto to the
Wiener Zeitung, which published it verbatim on 5 November.
The rest, they say, is history.