Obscure cool shop of the week: Fotoguffy

Lomography culture has become much adored by Bangkok’s hipster set in recent years, with shops all over the city feeding the photographic need for images with over-saturated colors, odd exposures and blurred shots. (What Lomo lovers like to call “happy accidents.")

Most retail shops just offer the modern day Lomo cameras that are now manufactured by a few different companies. But for retro lomography cameras and accessories -- as well as the new models -- head to Fotoguffy, near the Sam Yan MRT station (follow link for full contact details). There are original Polaroid cameras with film here too.

Fotoguffy has some pretty intriguing collector pieces on sale, like the LC-A XXVII Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza, which was distributed to the delegates of the XXVII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Cosina CX-1, a Japanese 35mm viewfinder camera that the first Lomo was based on (ok, copied from), and the more recent Paul Smith limited edition Fisheye No2.  

So stock up and quiz the knowledgeable owner, Boy. He hand picks all the items on sale, buying many of them off eBay.

We’ll bet he even knows what “Lomo” stands for. (We had to look it up.) For the record, it’s Leningradskoye Optiko Mechanichesckoye Obyedinenie (Leningrad Optical & Mechanical Enterprise), a Russian organization that produced the first Russian-made camera in 1930. Its LOMO LC-A, which in the 1990s became a global hit, wasn't made until 1982.