таз
cameras proliferated around the globe.
It was not until 1992, however, when
two Viennese marketing students
found one in a Prague thrift shop,
that the cameras went truly viral.
The duo easily finagled an agreement
with LOMO, which by that point was
nearing bankruptcy, and the company
granted them the sole right to soup up
and sell the cameras anywhere outside
the former Soviet Union. It took
LOMO until 1995 to realize the extent
of its blunder and cry foul, at which
point St. Petersburg’s deputy mayor,
one Vladimir Putin, intervened at the
behest of the Austrians. he placated
LOMO with a tax break and befriended
the company’s chair, Ilya Klebanov,
who would eventually become a deputy
prime minister. In the end,
Mechanical Factory, it came out with producing video cameras, microscopes the Austrian company retained
its first lightweight civilian camera.It and astrophysical instruments, the “Lomography” as its trademark.
continued its operations through the war largest of which, the BTA, or Big Now, with hundreds of thousands of
years, surviving the siege of Leningrad Telescope Alt-Azimuthal, had a diameter young people snapping photos, shar-
without ceasing its operations for even of 6 meters. ing them on myriad web forums, and
a day, heroically pumping out vital By the time the Soviet Union col- organizing themselves in underground
observational optics for the front. After lapsed, LOMO had produced over 40 Lomography clubs, perhaps LOMO’s
1962, when it was rechristened LOMO, million of the highly portable cameras for latest incarnation may prove to be
or the Leningrad Optico-Mechanical which it became famous. more than a fad. т
Amalgamation, the enterprise continued Like Soviet warheads, LOMO
readrussia.com/2008/WiNTer/ 21
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