M.I.O.M. Brand History

M.I.O.M. was a French company founded in the Paris suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine, France in 1929. The company’s full name was Manufacture d’Isolants et d’Objets Moulé (Manufacturer of Insulation and Molded Items) and they specialized in producing insulators for electrical components and various molded plastic products.

Although it was founded in 1929, M.I.O.M. did not enter the photography market until 1937 when it launched its flagship Photax line of medium format viewfinder cameras made of Bakelite, an early type of plastic. The company released over a dozen different Bakelite camera models in partnership with the Parisian lensmaker Boyer and later with the famous optical company Angénieux based near the eastern city of Saint-Étienne. During the German occupation of France in World War II, M.I.O.M. ceased production of cameras and resumed after the war’s end, introducing the Photax III in 1947.

Not much is known about the fate of M.I.O.M. but they appear to have stopped manufacturing cameras sometime in the early 1960s with the last known model being the Photax VI.