alicubi journal :: lomo diplomacy

In '91 an Austrian student named Mathias Fiegel was traveling on a student trip to Prague, and came across this little Russian camera, the Lomo camera, in an old photography store--brought it back to Vienna. They always really liked to party, he and his roommates; there were about five people in the apartment--five boys, more or less, that really liked to throw big parties and have fun. [They] integrated the camera into what they were doing there, which was being silly: following people in the bathroom, in the shower, taking pictures when they were really drunk or in funny situations. And also they were really smart in ways of just having fun and then writing a first manifesto and coming up with the rules and stuff like that.

The cameras at this point were all smuggled into Austria from the former Eastern Bloc countries. There were a lot of cities around Vienna, such as Bratislava, and all the former Eastern Bloc countries had Lomo cameras because they were part of the Soviet Union. Soon enough they bought most of the dead stock around Austria and they had to go further into what was then the Soviet Union. Further and further, and then smuggled back and got caught at customs got put into jail--a lot of very funny and weird stories. Mathias was one time caught at the border with 400 Lomo cameras and had to leave 200 with the customs clerk in order to not go to jail.

At one point they couldn't get any dead stock or old stock anymore from the surrounding stores, and directly contacted the company, which happened to be via fax, and the fax was sent April 1, which was considered by the receivers as an April Fool's Day joke--which they didn't even think about, you know. So the Russians thought somebody was making fun of them, especially as the Lomo camera at that point--and that was in, I think it was '94--nobody in Russia was interested. The factory had to deal with a lot of financial difficulties as the Soviet Union, or companies, suddenly had to be making profits and not just have everything paid by the state. So they had actually planned on closing the production of this camera, which for us was of course horrible, because for us that was the only source to get those cameras at that point.

Which led to a big meeting in St. Petersburg. At this point in Austria the whole thing was really an underground , very creative artistic movement, where already shows had been organized. The first show that was organized was put together after they had about 100 people using this camera, 100 people looking through the same eye at the world. And that was the first show that was greatly received, a great deal of press, and people were really really happy. The Austrian state gave some public money in order to do more shows. That was when the whole thing really took off.

In Austria it's very common that if you study at the university you spend one year or at least a semester as an exchange student. So a lot of our friends were all over Europe at least, also all over the world, carrying their Lomo with them of course, and becoming Lomo ambassadors, and that is one part of the whole strategy that they then came up with, which is a very funny thing, but also a very smart way of setting up a system or a network across Europe, which in the beginning was friends, but people had really worked hard from the very beginning and knew everything about it and at the same time spread out the approach, the movement, the combination of photography--very cheap photography, cheap camera, cheap film, cheap film processing--and the party element, the exhibitions. And everybody had also a certain way of doing that, so it gave each person their individual freedom but still passed on that whole thing, phenomenon, or whatever you want to call it, very fast, in a very well-working way, that of course didn't cost anything because at that point nobody really intended to have a business.

So that meeting in St. Petersburg, where basically all we brought was our friends--some of them being members of Parliament in Austria. Wolfgang [Stranzinger] and Mathias--those two guys are the main guys, are still the presidents of the company--knew some members of Parliament and they were really into the whole idea and they came along for the negotiation with the head of the factory.

And ultimately this brought us an invitation of the mayor of St. Petersburg, because whenever official members of another country travel they get an official reception with the people in power. It happened to be that the mayor of St. Petersburg didn't have time to come to this meeting, but he sent his vice mayor, which at this time was Vladimir Putin. The director of the Lomo factory at that point was a guy called Ilya Klebanov, who today is the vice prime minister of Russia, and who actually met Vladimir Putin at this exact meeting.

The negotiations were not really very successful in the first round because the Russians have very different way of doing business. The company that produces the Lomo camera is high tech. They have produced a lot of military equipment in the past. They still do, to a certain extent. They're trying to make this smaller but of course it is still a lot of their income and revenue. The company is a high-tech optical equipment factory. They produce telescopes, endoscopes, medical equipment. They had produced the world's largest telescope up to six years ago. They are majorly into the whole optical equipment production, and they are also partly coming from that military background. So you have to understand that the two funny boys coming from AustriaŠthey weren't completely convinced that that would be a good business idea. Them picking up a camera that they considered to be dead and not one of their jewels, not one of their optical masterpieces. It was really Putin that in a way then also pushed for making that contract happen because he thought that it might be a very good thing for the city of St. Petersburg; it might be very good also to start a collaboration with--even if it's funny--a European, young company. To this date the relationship is very good with the factory. They consider us to be a miracle of the marketing institution because we have made the Lomo camera a cult item all across the globe.

What is really important know about the Lomographic Society is that if you get one of those cameras you become a member in the society. Membership means that you're invited submit images; you're invited to participate in the global "photoplatform." You can be part of an online journal; you can be part of something called the Lomohomes; you can participate at events and competitions, at parties. For example, we had a big summer competition called the Lomographic Sampling Games which was divided into parts: One was a Lomo album which people could complete. There were 144 images, I believe it was, that had to submitted to certain topics and categories. You can look at it online in the Sampling Games event section. There's a sampling album which is really beautiful. And the other part were city challenges. In the US we had seven, and people would meet at a certain day and point in the city. You had to pick up an A-Z challenge list, which basically was a scavenger hunt with an A-B-C-D-E-F-G thing. We chose three people that won a trip to the finals, which were actually supposed to happen in October in Belgrade, but we moved that back due to the September 11 events, into spring of next year, and it most likely will happen in Vienna. That took place all over the world, in Japan, Austria, in Germany, in Spain in England, in you name it--in Kuala Lumpur. Winners from all over the world then meet at the finals and compete against each other. So we send three people from the States from the sampling games, and then we also have winners from the Lomo albums which will also go to the finals. Out of the sampling albums, some of the people also will be in an incredible book that will be published in April or May. So there is that whole other level of the community, the platform, the participation in the international community. And it is amazing what quality of images are going to be in that book. People will definitely change their minds about the "trashiness" of Lomography if they see that book because it's really mind-blowing. It's so beautiful what people shoot with the camera. It's really amazing what quality of images you get with that lens and with that camera.

How did you come to be the Lomo ambassador to the United States?

I know the boys. I know Wolfgang and Mathias from early on. We all come from a city called Innsbruck, which is in the mountains in Austria. Wolfgang I partly grew up with and Mahtias I met through my sister, being like 14, 15, 16, and from then on we were kind of like an extended clique of friends, and then we all moved to Vienna to study there, go to university there. And those guys always had those really crazy parties at their house. They had a huge beautiful old Art Deco apartment, in a horrible state of course, but they always had those parties with like 200, 300 people. Those apartments in Vienna usually are really beautiful but really cold during wintertime, because the ceilings are really high. Everybody was always really cold in their apartment, so you had to dress warm. So one time they laid out the money to heat up the whole place really really hot, and they had sand all over the apartment and sun chairs and those big inflatable palm trees. So everybody came completely wrapped up and dressed really warm. And they just opened the door in their bathing suits. So that's the kind of mindset that those guys came from. One of them studied law the other one studied economy but also biology, and then worked for the green party for a certain time. So they never intended to be entrepreneurs, but it happened, and they've proven to be really good and smart and intelligent about it.

Is Lomo your full-time job?

It is, since three years ago. We actually have seven people here at the office in New York. We're in DUMBO. So I knew the guys from back in Innsbruck, and then when I moved to New York I would always run into them in Austria around Christmastime, when everybody goes back home. They would always say, "Come on, do something; do something in New York." They had show here, a really great show in '94, which was a Moscow-New York show that opened in both cities at the same day, showing images of the other city. That was in '94, the first thing. That was before I was here. And after that there was never something really going on here. They had some friends, but there was nothing really happening. So at a point they finally convinced me that I should do something, and I did that on the side for about a year. And then it was just something that needed more time and attention and I started to work full time on the project, and a couple of months down the line I hired another person.

Are there many New Yorkers involved in Lomography?

You know, New Yorkers are funny people. If it's kind of like a secret club they like to be part of it, but they don't really do much to be in the club unless they are the complete nerds, or completely crazy about something. Also we didn't really have a lot of ongoing community events here in New York, honestly, because I just didn't have time for it. I hope that next year we'll have more of a regular get-together as we establish more of a community of people that know each other, actually. Because believe me, if you see somebody on the street with a Lomo camera, you will talk to that person.