Lomography: a mix of vintage and chic

Photo by Liu Qiang/Provided to chinadaily.com.cn

Since Eastman Kodak declared bankruptcy, the price of film has soared. Does this spell the end of the old-timer artform, the next to be elbowed aside by the digital world?

A growing number of film lovers who cling to lomo cameras say no.

"Film is not going to die. On the contrary, it may thrive as we are developing various lomo cameras and new types of inexpensive films to cultivate a market where one can realize the mix of old and new," said Liu Qiang, manager of the Beijing Lomography store.

Lomography, a company that sells plastic retro cameras, landed in Beijing five years ago after it took over such metropolitan centers of art as New York, and opened its second chain store one year later.

It did not take a long time before the cameras were embraced by amateur and professional Chinese photographers alike not only for their fashionable looks but also for their off-kilter, blurry and color-soaked effects.

"Lomo cameras have the kind of sizes and looks that you just want to put them into the pocket and take them everywhere you go. They are nothing like the bulky digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras," Wang Yang, a 29-year-old Beijing native, said.

Wang had been using the digital cameras for more than seven years before his friends lent him a Super Sampler, a lomo camera that can produce four successive images on one negative, three years ago.