There is a generational divide around the smell, feel and sound of winding a roll of 35mm film into a camera, says Matthias Fiegl, co-founder of the Austrian analogue camera maker Lomography. But it doesn’t fall in where you might imagine.
“It’s a funny thing that we didn’t expect at all,” he explains, as he plays with one of a dozen plastic cameras. “When you ask a 30-to-40-year-old about Lomography, they say: ‘You can do this with digital – Instagram is so cool.’ But with young people, they grow up with digital. Then they see film and they say: ‘This is so new.’ ”
The slogan of Lomography is “The future is analogue”. But as the company reaches its 20th anniversary and $40m in annual turnover, the three co-founders admit they are surprised by their customer demographics. “Some companies have the problem that their audience is getting older, ageing with the founders,” says Mr Fiegl, sitting in the Vienna head office alongside his co-owners, his wife Sally Bibawy and childhood friend Wolfgang Stranzinger. “We have the opposite problem. Lomography’s getting even younger and younger, and we are getting older and older.”