Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Tuesday 25 September 2007

LOMO loco

One of the incidental pleasures of strolling around London is that you never know what you might come across. Especially, these days, in Ken's Circus Maximus.

Last Saturday, it was the turn of the Lomography World Congress to give us the slightly maze-like LomoWorldWall.

Lomography uses LOMO* cameras for spur-of-the-moment snapshots, often in multiples, or with odd colour or fisheye or other trick effects.

A WorldWall puts lots together in colourful mosaics; but dress it up as they might with introductory artspeak posters, the cumulative effect takes the eye away from the individual images. Any effect they might have on their own is lost in the overall pattern.

Still, it made a cheerful contrast with the looming presence of the National Gallery, and for once the old cliché "All part of life's rich tapestry" was almost literally, and unexpectedly, true.

*Lomo is also Spanish for pork loin; what do they make of "lomographia" in Spain?

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