Birgus occupies an important position in Czech and international photography and has made a name for himself in several different roles. He works as curator, writer, historian and lecturer. In addition to his theoretical work he is an active photographer.
The beginning of his curatorial activities is associated with the Podloubí Gallery in Olomouc, whose programme during what is known as the period of normalisation in Czechoslovakia diverged from official galleries. During the 1970s and early 80s Birgus participated in shows that exhibited the work of the young generation of Czech and Slovak photographers. He also exhibited himself. In the second half of the seventies he began writing for Czechoslovak Photography and the Photographic Review, and he was published in many other domestic and international periodicals. He wrote exhibition reviews, profiles of young artists and photographers from around the world, as well as studies of avant-garde theatre and its use of film and photographic projection, based on research he had conducted when writing his dissertation and thesis. An opportunity to travel around Europe gave him the opportunity to inform the Czech scene of events taking place in the world of photography. He published reviews of exhibitions abroad, festivals and galleries. He created an extensive network of international contacts and collaborated on curatorial projects at home and abroad. He worked closely with representatives of Polish and Lithuanian photography.
He wrote books on many different artists (e.g. Miroslav Bílek, Milan Borovička, Tibor Honty and Jindřich Marco), contributed significantly to promoting the work of František Drtikol and discovered the until then unknown Krnov-based photographer Gustav Aulehla. Birgus is most at home with large anthologising exhibitions and publications published in different languages introducing Czech photography to the outside world and helping to establish its place within a European context.
During the 1980s and 90s, when interest in the West was increasing in the art of countries of the former Soviet bloc, along with Miroslav Vojtěchovský he prepared several exhibitions of Czechoslovak and then Czech photography for foreign festivals and galleries: Contemporary Czechoslovakian Photography (1989, Amsterdam), Tschechoslowakische Fotografie der Gegenwart (1990, Cologne), Certainty and Searching in Czech Photography of the 1990s (1993), and Czech Photography of the 1990s (1996). Later he turned his attention to more detailed work. With Václav Podestát he organised the exhibition Contemporary Czech Documentary Photography (2001, Herten), while gender played a pivotal role in the exhibition of Czech and Slovak female photographers Glocal Girls as part of Prague Biennale 3 (2007). His most recent exhibition The Intimate Circle in Contemporary Czech Photography (2013) attempted to examine “the themes and motifs of artistic self-reflection, introspection, intimacy, family, close people and things” (Birgus).
Of avant-garde personalities Birgus paid close attention to the work of Eugen Wiškovský and Jaroslav Rössler. His exhibition Modern Beauty: The Czech Photographic Avant-garde 1918-1948 (1998) won international acclaim. It was premiered in Barcelona and reprised in Paris, Lausanne, Prague, Munich, and in a pared down form in Berlin and Budapest. With Jan Mlčoch he organised the exhibition The Nude in Czech Photography (2000) and the large exhibition Czech Photography of the 20th Century (2005), which did not restrict itself to established figures but attempted a chronological organisation of the main developmental tendencies of Czech photography, including those that had previously been sidelined, be this genre-based amateur photography of the interwar period or work in the spirit of socialist realism.
Birgus’s curatorial projects are often linked with his teaching activities. After graduating from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, in 1978 he became a lecturer at the photography department, and from 1998 to 2002 led the Department of the History and Theory of Photography. In 1982 he became director of the Institute of Creative Photography of the Czech Union of Photographers, first offering correspondence courses and later combined training for amateurs. In 1990 the institute received accreditation as a university and became part of the Silesian University in Opava. Birgus organised many exhibitions of student works at home and abroad and established a reputation for both universities on the international stage.
At the start of his own career as photographer in the late 1960s, Birgus was most interested in staged photography. In Sequence (1969–73) he manipulated the negative in order to capture the gradual disappearance of the figure in sequentially arranged shots, while the cycle of nudes Contrapunct (1972–74) is based on the creative contrast of black-and-white. Documentary photography gradually predominated in his work. He recorded scenes from public life, including a critical view of communist celebrations and demonstrations, or random yet expressive situations from the streets of Western European cities he was permitted to visit during the seventies on work trips (the cycles Bradford, East End, 1975). His lifelong project is the huge, as yet unfinished cycle Cosi nevyslovitelného / Something Unspeakable. His pictures often deal with parallel events and unconventional compositions capturing a subjective mood and creative character. During the 1980s colour enters his work and becomes a predominant feature of the image, lending a hint of the phantasmagorical. During the nineties both the colour scheme and composition of his work becomes calmer and crowded scenes alternative with starker atmospheres. An almost existential element arrives that lends his work a symbolic level. His photography acquires the emotive eloquence of something ineffable.
Literature:
Štěpánka Bieleszová, Vladimír Birgus. Photography 1972-2014, KANT, Prague 2014.
