 VLADIMÍR
BIRGUS: SOMETHING UNSPEAKABLE
From the 1980s Vladimír Birgus began to
give preference to colour. The range of colours which
he uses in his photographs is very often reduced to
subdued shades of blue and almost black-and-white. On
the other hand, we can often come across a striking,
dominant use of a red or yellow surface. Just as
in modern painting, when colour is frequently not intended
to precisely portray deeply-rooted reality of our world,
Vladimír Birgus chooses only a art of the colour
spectrum. A red area contains strength and a glow
and a loud signals is revealed by colour. In a photograph
taken in Paris in 1990 we can decipher the torso of
the Eiffel Tower against the background of a blue
sky and also the neighbourhood of dominant ochre wall.
The seemingly flat composition acquires its mysterious
character by means of thrown shadows (perhaps during
the early dawn or at the end of the day) in which an
important role is played by shadow-indicated moving
figure opposite which there emerges from the depth of
the dark area a contrasting, small red area of
a realistically portrayed figure. It seems that
it is an unimportant figure, but in actual fact it is
the important central point of the whole picture which
fills it with restlessness and, in the composition of
the photograph, creates the so necessary colour counterbalance
to the rest of the monochromatic areas.
A similar parallel can be seen in a photograph
which was taken somewhere in the streets of Manhattan
in New York in 1995. Nothing points to a concrete
place in wealthier or poorer quarters. Here we see a conspicuous
red area of a newspaper stand, which figuratively
looks like an enormous technical monster, as well as
figures moving against a huge wall. The first,
attired in a red coat, expresses hope, the way
ahead, while the smaller black figure in the centre,
receding into the distance, is quite possibly a metaphor
for sorrow.
The example of the two incidentally described photographs
indicates that the photographer is fond of working with
symbolic meanings. Naturally, he doesn’t forget the
careful composition even though considerably remote
from the classical rules. He uses tonal and colour contrasts,
but in the final tenor he leaves the viewer the so important
free scope for his or her own interpretation of what
is intimated. He is indifferent to the questions of
whether his photographs originate here or there, because
he doesn’t provide full/value information about a concrete
place. In the present rapid course of the world every
passing second has its own importance and climax.
It is quite possible that viewers will find in Vladimír
Birgus‘s photographs a number of other ties and
symbols and consequently also episodes. It can be said
that his photographs are about emotions, moods, hidden
desires and experiences. He disturbs us with an indicated
happening which everyone can perceive in his or her
own way. With an abundance of everyday situations he
shatters our restless and hectic era into thousands
of fragments and reverberations in our own selves.
In the first plane of observation Vladimír Birgus’s
photographs present miniepisodes taking place in the
most varied places of our planet, while in the second
they mainly inform us about the present hurried process
of globalization of society, loneliness in the middle
of a crowd, the contrasts between dreams and reality,
the not fully said and the suspected. Thus about the
inner state borne with various degrees of intensity
in our souls.
Václav Podestát
(Václav Podestát: Vladimír Birgus. Something
Unspeakable.
Imago (Bratislava), 2002, č. 14, s. 16–17. )
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