Vladimír Birgus is a photographer, curator, photography historian, professor, and head of the Institute of Creative Photography at the Silesian University in Opava.

His current exhibition at the Photon Gallery focuses on color works created over the past decade. However, Birgus began exploring the possibilities of color photography as early as the early 1980s, when this technique was still relatively rare in photo and art circles in central-east Europe.

As one of the leading Czech photographers, Vladimír Birgus played a crucial role in introducing and developing color photography in this region. Although he was already an established black-and-white photographer, he found new opportunities for expressing emotions, psychological states, and subjective views of reality in color photography. Through color photography, Birgus moved away from the classical social themes that dominated his earlier work, although he continued to create black-and-white photography alongside.