So this is how it all started – General Igor Petrowitsch Kornitzky, right-hand man to the USSR Minister of Defense and Industry, slammed a little Japanese compact camera called the Cosina CX-1 onto the desk of his comrade, Michail Panfilowitsch Panfiloff. Panfiloff, who was the Director of the powerful LOMO Russian Arms and Optical factory, carefully examined the item, observing its sharp glass lens, extremely high light sensitivity and robust casing.

Realizing its potential, the two gentlemen gave orders to the LOMO PLC factory in St. Petersburg, Russia, to create an improved version of the Cosina CX-1 – and the first working sample of the LOMO LC-A was born!

While touring Prague, a group of young Viennese students stumbled upon the LOMO LC-A in a quirky, old-school camera shop, and started shooting from the hip. Upon returning to Vienna, they had their film rolls developed, resulting in strangely beautiful images. Soon the questions started coming from friends, family and strangers – they wanted their own LC-A cameras!

In 1994, Lomography invaded the world wide web by launching lomo.com. It was also in this year that a momentous Lomographic exhibition was simultaneously held in New York City and Moscow, with massive LomoWalls gracing each city, showcasing colorful Lomographs from the other. Soon, the first Lomography Embassy Store was established in Berlin.

Relaunching lomo.com as lomography.com, the new website introduced a product shop, community interaction, special projects, activities and services, plus the WorldArchive, which displayed a collection of amazing Lomographs from different places across the globe.

Also in 1997, the first Lomographic World Congress was held in Madrid and boasted a LomoWall of over 120 meters – it consisted of more than 35,000 analogue photos!

Designed, manufactured and patented by Lomography, the Supersampler was launched in 2000 and emerged as the “Queen of all Multilens Cameras.” The revolutionary camera takes four sequential images in one 35mm photograph.

Among the new community functions launched on lomography.com were LomoHomes — a space for the Lomography community to store all of their analogue photos and make their very own LomoWalls!

In 2002, Vienna hosted the 10th Anniversary Lomography World Congress which was a grand party and showcased beautiful Lomographic shots from across the globe.

In 2004, we installed the biggest LomoWall to date during the Lomography World Congress in China. For one whole week, Beijing was bursting with shiny analogue photos and tons of exciting activities!

In 2006, we introduced the LOMO LC-A+. The LC-A+ offers the same endearing qualities of the original LOMO LC-A – sharp contrast, deep saturation and the trademark vignetting – while also adding more exciting features such as a multiple-exposure switch and the option to use newly-developed LC-A+ accessories!

In 2008, we launched the Lubitel+ – this is our pimped-up version of the twin-lensed classic Lubitel camera. The Lubitel offers the capability to switch between 120 and 35mm film and aperture/shutter guides.

Two photographic techniques – cross processing and redscaling – were made easier with the introduction of the very first Lomography films – the Lomography X-Pro film and Lomography Redscale film.

2010 will be remembered as the year Lomography ensured that the future would remain analogue once and for all! We took the Cologne Photokina by storm yet again, spreading analogue love and announcing our 10 Prophecies for the Analogue Future!

The revolutionary Spinner 360° was launched and was quickly awarded the European Consumers Choice Award! We then unleashed the time-travelling Sprocket Rocket in October, the first analogue camera dedicated entirely to sprockets!

We also set about ensuring that the future was on film by producing more of our own! We released a whole range of 120 and 35mm format films including special redscale and X-Pro films.

In celebration of the LOMO LC-A that started the Lomographic movement, two limited editions were created: the LC-A+ White & the LC-A+ Gold. Also in this year, 10 groups of film-fanatics from around the world teamed up to join the great LC-A Race – a race from the four corners of the globe back to Lomography headquarters in Vienna, armed only with a GPS, a notebook and an LC-A+ camera!

2012 was a hugely exciting year for all things Lomography. We launched a whole host of exciting cameras and started a big celebration for our 20th anniversary.

To start with, we announced that Lomography was re-introducing 110 film to the world! This film format had been out of production since 2009 and it was a pleasure to bring it back in style with the launches of Orca B&W 110 film and Tiger CN 110. We then followed this up by producing our very first 110 format cameras, the Fisheye Baby 110 and Diana Baby 110 (you can find out more about them on our dedicated 110 photography site).

In September, we demonstrated our ever-inquisitive nature by producing a huge survey about how the worlds of analogue and digital are involved in Lomographers’ lives. The survey was answered by over 5000 people from 82 countries and produced some very interesting results. You can view the data as an infographic on our Analogue vs Digital site.

We left what many would say was the biggest and best news of the year until October. It was in this month that we announced the launch of the Belair X 6-12, the world’s first medium format 6×12 auto-exposure camera.

And if all this wasn’t quite enough, it also happened to be the year when we reached the ripe old age of 20! That’s right, Lomography started all the way back in 1992 – we celebrated our anniversary by taking a look back at some of our favorite memories on our 20th Anniversary Site.

In the first half of 2014, three new instant cameras were launched. The LC-A+ Instant Camera and Belair X 6-12 Instant Camera turned the iconic LC-A+ and Belair X 6-12 into instant snap-shooters. Then in May came the Lomo’Instant, Lomography’s first dedicated instant camera and the world’s most creative instant camera! It was our 3rd consecutive successful Kickstarter campaign and made Lomography the first company to ever have 2 projects raise over $1 million in the Product Design category of Kickstarter.

During the year, we also launched the New Russar+ Lens (L36/M Mount), which expands the Lomography Art Lens family. The New Russar+ is a rebirth of the legendary 1958 Russar MR-2, which was the mother of all modern super wide-angle lenses. With the New Russar+, you can shoot sharp wide-angle photos bursting with wonderful character. It’s perfect for capturing landscapes, architectural shots, portraits and street photography.

In August, we celebrated a year since we first unveiled the New Petzval Lens by holding the first ever dedicated Petzval competition and displaying the best photos taken with the New Petzval in Lomography Gallery Stores around the world. To coincide with Film Photography Day earlier in the year, we also held two ‘Search For Analogue Stars’ competitions in order to find the very best photographers shooting film in the 21st century.

We also had a bunch of exciting film launches during the year. In July, we unveiled to the world Cine200 Tungsten Film; it’s a real cinematic film which has been specially altered to enable it to be used on 35mm photographic cameras. Having sold out in a matter of days, we were thrilled to be able to offer its follow-up, the 400 ISO Cine400 Tungsten Film, in October. And our film fun was not done yet. Later in October, LomoChrome Turquoise XR 100-400 Color Negative Film was launched. This film works similarly to LomoChrome Purple Film but offers brand new, crazy and fun color shifts to enjoy. It bathes your photos in lustrous tones – turning lighter colors into varying shades of blues from aqua to cobalt, transforming greens into deep emerald shades and changing a crystal clear sea into a golden hue.

In April 2016, we launched a brand new addition to the ever-expanding Lomography Art Lens family. Inspired by the lens that gave the world practical photography, the Daguerreotype Achromat 2.9/64 Art Lens is perfect for shooting rich, atmospheric images with beautiful bokeh backgrounds. Our brand new Art Lens was successfully funded on Kickstarter in just four hours – we could not have asked for a better response!

Hugely inspired by the support for the Daguerreotype Achromat, August 2016 saw us return to Kickstarter to launch an instant camera unlike any other. Fully automatic, jam-packed with creative features and super easy to use, the Lomo’Instant Automat lets you take perfectly-exposed pictures in any and every lighting situation. Our brand new instant innovation was a huge success, and received excellent reviews from around the world.

We were super excited to take our two brand new inventions to Photokina, the world’s leading trade fair for photo and video. We had tons of fun at our booth holding a live instant competition, hosting exhibitions, chatting to visitors, and letting people try out the very latest Lomography products. We were thrilled that so many people came to see us and loved our products!

Competitions celebrating the great photography produced by our talented Community have always been at the heart of Lomography, and that’s why we decided to launch the TEN AND ONE Annual Lomography Photo Award. Lomographers are challenged to explore the fringes of photography, think outside the box, and enter their best shots into 11 different categories including “Urban Explorers” and “Breaking Boundaries”. The winners of each category then qualify for the TEN AND ONE Annual Lomography Photo Award. In 2016 we received tons of inspirational entries and we were delighted to award the winner over 20,000 EUR worth of prizes at the end of the year!