Although it’s true that Lomography has penetrated the market early 2000 and has been extremely popular these days, its history can be traced back to early 1980’s. It was in 1982 when Lomo PLC factory of Saint Petersburg, Russia created the 35mm Lomo LC-A Kompakt Automat.

1991 – Austrian founders of Lomography discovered the Lomo LC-A. Lomography signed an exclusive distribution agreement with LOMO PLC, making them the sole distributor of all Lomo LC-A cameras outside of Russia.

1992, 1993 – Two Viennese students, Matthias Fiegl and Wolfgang Stranzinger discovered the Lomo Kompakt Automat and found the Lomographic Society International, with the aim of spreading the message of Lomography all over the world. Now, it has over 500,000 members.

1994, 1995 – The first international Lomo Exhibition is held in Moscow and New York simultaneously, displaying thousands of images. A couple of months later, Lomographic Embassy was established in Berlin and began to spread across the world in no time.

1996 – The Russian production plant stopped manufacturing cameras due to the high demand for Lomo Kompakt. The Lomo Optics factory of St. Petersburg successfully convinced Mr. Vladimir Putin to continue its steady supply.

1997 – Lomography has penetrated the Internet with the launching of lomography.com.

1998, 1999 – Actionsampler was introduced.

2000 – Supersampler was introduced at the Salone Del Mobile. Here, the massive annual design convention in Milan, the Lomographic Society International presented the Supersampler as the first camera to have been developed, designed and patented exclusively by a team of Lomographers.

2000, 2001 – The Lomo-Mauritius image Catalogue is released. It contained over 250 pages of glossy, bursting lomographic images – from both the LC-A and ActionSampler Format. Soon, the very first Lomographic Shop in the world was opened to the market.

Now that the craze over Lomography has gone mainstream big time, its success can actually be attributed to its colorful history, the people behind it who held up to their aim to promote Lomo throughout the world, and to the enthusiasts who “shoot as many impossible pictures as possible in the most impossible of situations from the most impossible of positions.”