Here’s an exclusive interview that I did for Pocket-lint.com on the return to analogue photography, featuring Lomography’s online manager for the UK, Heidi Mace.

What do Hollywood actor Elijah Wood, recently disbanded US rock group The White Stripes and English sci-fi author Neil Gaiman have in common? Give up? The answer is that they’re all fans of cult analogue photography brand Lomography (or Lomo to its friends).

Famous for cameras such as the Diana and the LC-A, Lomo is popular with both young hipsters and older fans who prefer the good old days before digital photography came along and completely changed the way we take pictures. But, in this age of technical know-how, why is analogue photography so popular again? We settled down for a chat with Lomography UK’s online manager, Heidi Mace, at the company’s central London gallery store in order to shed some more light on the subject.

“It has a lot to do with people growing a bit tired with their digtial cameras. Even though digital is obviously a great innovation that has revolutionized photography, people get bored of them because they know what they’ve got before they’ve even upoaded them. People love the fact you never quite know what you’ve taken until you get your Lomo pictures back. You get more interesting results and so you feel like you’re achieving something.

“The cameras are pretty simplistic in a way, but that gives you a lot of artistic licence. You can do lots of different things, without spending lots of money or having to understand aperture settings etc. When I first started using lomo cameras, I didn’t have a clue what any of that was, but I still managed to find a way of taking photos without having to worry about getting all of the technical settings right.”

You can read the rest of the article here on Pocket-lint.com (originally published 03/03/11).