Vladimír Birgus is a photographer, curator, historian of photography, professor and head of the Institute of Creative Photography at the Silesian University in Opava. As early as the early 1980s, he was one of the first Czech photographers who tried to make thoughtful use of the emotional and psychological effects of colour in subjectively conceived documentary images, which were produced in parallel with his black and white work. Birgus’s photographs in the book are accompanied by only brief information about the year and place of their creation; the various ways of interpretation are entirely up to the viewer and their willingness to mentally engage. As the years pass, his works are more and more accompanied by the motif of melancholy and the principle of counterpoint, striving for the surrealism of impressive scenery as well as the application of metaphor and symbolism. In many confrontations of people with their environment or in response to various coexisting stories, exposed in a split second in the scenery of the lived present, he alienates the micro-stories of human existence.

Photos: Vladimír Birgus
Text: Štěpánka Bieleszová
Translation: Derek & Marzia Paton
Design: Petr Šmalec
Publisher: KANT in cooperation with the Olomouc Museum of Art
Hardcover, 179 pages
ISBN-10:8087149750
ISBN-13: 978-8087149751