35 years of the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava

The Institute of Creative Photography (ITF) of the Silesian University in Opava celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. To mark the occasion, a special large-scale exhibition has been prepared, presenting the most outstanding works by students and graduates created over the past five years — within the framework of semester projects, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral theses.

Exhibition venues: Dům umění v Opavě, St. Wenceslas Church in Opava, Kulturně-umělecký prostor KUPEDates: September 12 – October 30, 2025

Opening: September 11, 2025, 5:00 PM

Curators: Vladimír Birgus and Ondřej Durczak

Curatorial collaboration: Lukáš Horký, Otakar Karlas, Lukáš Lamla, David Macháč, Josef Moucha, Václav Podestát, Karel Poneš, Michał Szalast, Martin Vimr

Organizers: Silesian University in Opava, Faculty of Philosophy and Science, Institute of Creative Photography, Opava Cultural Organization OKO, and Kulturně-umělecký prostor KUPE.The exhibition is held under the patronage of Tomáš Navrátil, Mayor of Opava, and Tomáš Gongol, Rector of the Silesian University in Opava.

Founded in the autumn of 1990 as the third institution of higher education in the former Eastern Bloc to offer studies in photography — after Prague’s FAMU and Leipzig’s Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst — ITF has, from the very beginning, built its position as one of the most important centers of photographic education in Central Europe.

The anniversary exhibition will showcase a broad spectrum of contemporary trends in photography — from subjective documentary and reflective narratives of everyday life, through portrait and staged photography, to intermedia experiments and conceptual art. The projects include deeply personal works dealing with themes of identity, family relations, and memory, as well as works addressing pressing global issues: climate change, migration, the war in Ukraine, or the transformation of urban space. The exhibition presents works by authors from the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and beyond.

Among the highlights are award-winning reportage photographs by Roman Vondrouš, whose iconic horse-racing image has become the exhibition’s logo, and a dramatic photograph by Dorota Holubová from protests in Bratislava, recognized as the Slovak Press Photo of the Year 2023. Katarzyna Ewa Żak will present her series The Entropy of the Present, awarded at the Grand Press Photo 2024; Katarzyna Kouzmitcheva will show a poignant documentary on contemporary Belarus. Zbigniew Kordys explores unknown areas around Auschwitz-Birkenau, while Aleksandra Kossowska (Poleczki.art) presents powerful images of civilian suffering in Sudan. In portraiture, the exhibition features sociologically striking works by David Macháč, grotesque group shots by Roman Franc, and an intimate series by Iwona Germanek (Pink Does Not Exist), dealing with her daughter’s illness.

The exhibition is accompanied by multimedia projections, presentations of photo books, as well as theoretical works — bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral theses — which make an important contribution to the historiography of Czech, Polish, and Slovak photography. All materials, including semester projects and theses, are also available online at www.itf.cz.

A bilingual Czech-English jubilee catalog has also been published, featuring reproductions of the exhibited works, a summary of ITF’s most significant achievements over the past five years, and an overview of awards received by its students and graduates.

Following its premiere in Opava, the exhibition will travel to the Foto Art Festival in Bielsko-Biała in October 2025, the Month of Photography in Bratislava in November 2025, and to the main building of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague in 2026.

35 YEARS OF THE INSTITUTE OF CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY IN OPAVA SEPTEMBER 12 – OCTOBER 30, 2025

35 YEARS OF THE INSTITUTE OF CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY IN OPAVA
SEPTEMBER 12 – OCTOBER 30, 2025