Study and document the world's surface by taking millions of snapshots of it

Dived into a digital landscape, the abundance, somehow funny, is clearing out the instant quality.
In this Instant notion, there is something that is congealed, interrupted, and probably untouchable. The glance is grazing the subject.
Nowadays, the snapshot language doesn't produce "romantism" anymore, it produces a simple communication, an inappropriate and mechanical immodesty. It is embarrassing so much its vulgarity appropriates the fickleness, the incommensurable.
The unwonted is what is seducing though, immutable but lyrical, irregular, and modest.
Although snapshots are interesting when it makes way for accident, flawed, as far as the technical side is not involved.
We shoot what we see, what we feel, what we can, as much as possible, spontaneously. To Capture the indomitable. This way of taking pictures has bloomed during those past ten years. Images from lost parties to unknown people - with or without interest - are published excessively, and soon they are not evoking anything more than boredom. Though the first idea was appealing, when it was meant to go against a formatted aesthetic, making way for dilettantism. To break free from technical constraints. Liberation, like revolution, is necessary. Disobedience. But as any concept caught up by a marketed world, publicists and trendsetters are endlessly practising and using an idea til revulsion. Overdose. Inexhaustible disposable culture.
Nevertheless, costless got weakness.
Indeed, there are alternatives to apprehend the Immediate.
The Lomo is one of these possibilities. Snapshot can turn into an exclusive glance, capturing the instant, free from technical mean, creating its own artistic aesthetic, obviously easy but with particular attention and gift.




The first Lomo camera is born in 1982 in Russia. Later on some Viennese students discovered this accessible camera and used it to shoot anything, everything, with fun, as a testimony of their everyday life. The artistic field was wide with this new way of capturing images, giving birth to the Lomography community.

Soon the Lomo became famous with its incredible camera - among others - the Action Sampler: a 4 lensed, photo-photo-photo-photo camera that dissected a second into four parts and then put them back together to create something totally new.
The community was growing.

The Diana F+ is one of the Lomo new camera. A very simple, low-quality plastic-bodied box camera. The Diana takes sixteen 4X4 cm pictures on 120 films, leaving a large part of the film surface unused.
This camera was first produced in the early 60's in Hong Kong. Re-issued, "the design of the Diana incorporates a lens that produces an image circle which only marginally covers the diagonal of a film frame. This marginal coverage field produces images with often pronounced vignetting. The poor quality of the plastic meniscus lens results in generally low contrast, odd color rendition, chromatic aberration, and blurred images. Although these attributes are generally thought undesirable in a camera, some photographers have intentionally used these characteristics to produce photographs with interesting or artistic effects".


The Diana F+, is an affordable jewel, light, easy to handle, and sobre. Delivered with a flash (F+), and a nice book: More True Tales & Short Stories, including photographs and stories around this object.

Moreover, last November, Lomography has opened its temporary tiny and friendly shop-gallery in Paris (6, Place Frantz Liszt in the 10th). There you can slide into Lomo's realm, and find a large selection of affordable cameras. Specific events are expected during this boarding trip (Spring 2008).




www.lomography.com