Long, long before Kosmo Foto existed, I fell down a rabbit hole of Soviet camera collecting.
The designs sometimes slavishly copied successful Western designs, and sometimes didn’t – cameras like the KMZ Start, the LOMO Voskhod and the Kiev-10 don’t have any real counterparts on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Along with this whole new universe of cameras and lenses was the art that came alongside it – retro-futuristic optimism emblazoned on camera boxes and manuals.
Cosmic art was a big thing in the USSR; it went hand-in-hand with the Soviet state’s loudly lauded advances in aeronautics and rocket design, propaganda by paintbrush and ink.
Other Eastern European countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia created rich visual styles aswell; many of these breathtaking designs found their way onto matchboxes, in age where most of the adult population lit up for leisure, the matchbox was a powerful tool for visual communication.
Some years after the Kosmo Foto blog began, I got the chance to release my first film Kosmo Foto Mono. This was the perfect chance to bring that wonderful style of graphic art into the picture, courtesy of my then-work colleague Martin (My Mate Does Art).
On the back of Kosmo Foto Mono’s cosmic packaging, Martin also produced five space images for a postcard/sticker set very inspired by that same Soviet-era cosmic art. One of them is the camera-toting cosmonaut you’ll have seen popping up in various places, and another is the film canister made to look like a satellite.
A couple of those images later made it to t-shirts before the pandemic, but my plans to further the range were overtaken by events – and all the effort it took to launch the follow-up film, Agent Shadow.
But a few weeks ago, I set up a clothing shop through Teemill, the company that printed those t-shirts sold through the Kosmo Foto Shop. Teemill is a hugely successful t-shirt printer, but one that comes with a difference – some seriously ambitious sustainability goals. The t-shirts are all made from organic cotton, the inks used for the prints are non-toxic, and much of the electricity used to power the factory on the Isle of Wight is produced onsite from renewable sources.
After a little bit of soft launch tweaking, I’m now ready to make a much bigger noise about Kosmo Foto Clothing. It’s a much bigger range of merch than I would have been able to provide before, and there on-demand printing means the t-shirts and hoodies are available in many more colours than I’d have been able to offer.
The range includes t-shirts, sweaters, hoodies and tote bags all featuring the Space images (with different designs for men and women), aswell as coffee mugs, zippered bags and tech organisers. There are even two art prints featuring the Kosmonaut and Raketa designs which can also be purchased framed.
Teemill offers international shipping and each order is dispatched individually from the factory (in recyclable packaging).
After Christmas I’ll be adding other items to the list and also merch using some of the Jetset images also designed by My Mate Does Art.
In the meantime, do check out what’s on offer. The cut-off date for EU orders to arrive by Christmas is 11 December while the UK orders deadline is 21 December.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
