Vladimír Birgus is a Czech photographer, historian of photography and university professor. He was born in 1954 in Frýdek-Místek and spent his youth in Příbor. Since 1974 he has been devoted to photography, especially social documentation and color abstraction. His work is influenced by the humanistic tradition of Czech photography and conceptual art. He exhibited at more than 50 solo exhibitions around the world and his works are represented in the collections of many museums and galleries, such as National Gallery Prague, Moravian Gallery Brno, Museum of Art Olomouc, Centre Pompidou Paris or Museum Ludwig Cologne . He collaborated with Lithuanian photographers such as Romualdas Požerskis, and curated a number of exhibitions of contemporary art, such as Czech Photography of the 20th Century (2005), Czech Photography of the Seventies (2010) or Czech Photography of the Eighties (2015). He is author or co-author of more than 40 books on history and theory of photography, among them Czech Photographic Avant-Garde 1918-1948 (1999), Photography of Czech Borderlands (2001), Czech Color Photography 1954-1979 (2007) or Czech Photography of the 20th Century (2010). Since 1990 he teaches at Institute for Creative Photography at Faculty of Philosophy and Science Silesian University in Opava where he has been professor since 2005. He is also chairman of Association Professional Photographers CR and member editorial board magazine Fotograf.