A sample of Steph Parke’s toy camera collection, taken in April. (Photo by Steph Parke)

The quest for authentic Soviet kitsch is difficult for an American with limited Russian-language skills. That’s what Brittany Pheiffer, at the time a Dartmouth student studying abroad for the summer, learned in 2003 as she wandered through St. Petersburg in search of a toy camera.

Pheiffer wasn’t looking for a real toy. She wanted a type of retro film camera born at the height of the Cold War, in the mid-1980s. Made of plastic, such toy cameras, as they are known, distort reality and produce photos with surreal qualities: oversaturated colors, off-kilter exposure and darkened corners, in an effect called vignetting. The camera’s flaws are its charm.

Roaming the city, Pheiffer asked a string of locals for directions to a place where she could buy a Lomo, one popular brand of toy camera. But her poor Russian pronunciation induced only confused faces, and no one could send her to the right place.

So after trying so hard to find a toy camera on its native turf, Pheiffer was surprised in 2007 to spot a remake of the Lomo being sold at the trendy U.S. clothing store Urban Outfitters. Finding one today is even less of struggle. Lomos, along with Holgas and Dianas, two other popular models, are now sold at museum gift shops, photography stores, toy stores, boutiques and large chains like Urban Outfitters. And seven stand-alone Lomography gallery stores have opened in the past 14 months worldwide, including ones in Los Angeles and New York.

The more some things move forward, it seems, the more some people want them to reverse. “With the advent of the Internet and digital, people are going back to film,” says Luis Torres, a sales associate at B&H Photo in New York. “People want something different and unique.” Torres says he has seen a rise in toy camera sales at B&H since 2005. The simple, no-frills nature of the toy cameras — no lens to focus, no shutter speed or aperture to calculate — is part of their appeal.

While software and changeable lenses allow digital cameras to mimic the effects created by toy cameras, users say shooting low-tech with film produces a quality that can’t be replicated. It has an irreplaceable vintage feel.

“The Lomo is fun, easy and fashionable. It’s like the old Polaroid,” says Denver-based photographer Mark Sink. “It fits the culture of what I call Warhol’s children — a 20-something counterculture — kids that are into reverse technology and not going the route of more megapixels.”

The popularization of the Lomo began in May 1991, at the onset of democracy in the former Soviet bloc, when Wolfgang Stranzinger and Matthias Fiegl, two Austrian students, stumbled on Lomo cameras in an old camera shop in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). They bought a couple and began shooting. A year later, in 1992, they founded the Lomographic Society International, the leading manufacturer and seller of toy cameras, and spawned a global following as the first Lomographers exhibited their images.

In 1996, Stranzinger and Fiegl signed a contract with Vladimir Putin, then mayor of St. Petersburg, giving them exclusive rights to distribute the Lomo LC-A camera. Today, the company’s community has grown to more than 1 million people worldwide, according to website registration and product sales information provided by Nicole Bogatitus, press officer of the Lomography gallery stores in the U.S.

A toy camera can seem regressive to photographers accustomed to sharp focus and balanced exposure. Steph Parke, editor of Light Leaks, a photography magazine for toy camera users, recalls being shocked when her photography teacher at Weber State University in Utah told the class to pick up some Holgas from the lab. The Holga, like the Lomo, broke all of the long-standing axioms of photography that Parke had always followed.

“I didn’t understand why I was assigned something so awful,” she says. “I was used to predictably sharp photos, ones without all these flaws.” A couple of years later, after graduation, Parke was again exposed to toy camera work when she stumbled on some color Holga photos online. This time around, she loved the images and immediately ordered a Holga camera. Today, she owns 30 toy cameras.

Some users are wary of all the quirky Lomography cameras and lenses that the company sells. Sink, the photographer, thinks all the “wacky and wild” accessories give people the illusion that they’re creating art. “In rare cases can a good concept and a Lomo camera make an excellent fine-art image,” Sink says. “It’s hard to find.”

Photographers like Sink believe that when a person is using a camera that produces fun and surreal images, it’s easy to let the camera dictate the artistic journey. But if the user takes control and understands how to manipulate the flaws of the camera, then the results can vary widely. “What’s interesting is when the person has the vision and then uses the camera,” says Michelle Bates, a Holga photographer in Seattle and author of the 2007 book “Plastic Cameras: Toying With Creativity,” which will shortly come out with a second edition.

Whether they’re having fun or making art, most users love the vintage quality of toy camera images. About eight years ago, Jocelyn Gotlib, a fine-art photographer in Ann Arbor, Mich., was admiring old photos of her great-aunt. She was moved by the faded colors and her aunt’s one-piece bathing suit and puckered lips. “I wanted and want to be there in those photos, be vintage and worn in and comfortable,” says Gotlib.

For her, using a toy camera is like a journey to the past. “It adds the soft edges around the frame,” she says, “bringing us all a little closer to a time we cannot reach.”