Head of the Institute:
Prof. PhDr. Vladimír Birgus
Assistant Head: Mgr. Jiří Siostrzonek, Ph.D.
Contact:
Ivana Mikolášová
Bezručovo nám. 13
746 01 Opava
Czech Republic
Phone: +420 553 684 385
E-mail: itf(at)fpf.slu.cz
Web: http://www.itf.cz
Silesian University is one of the six Czech schools, together with the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Art, Design and Architecture in Prague, J. E. Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem and Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín that provide a university education in the subject of photography.
The system of study at the ICP includes mail assessment of practical exercises assigned by the experienced teachers. However, it is the system of four-day study stays (five stays in a year) that is of crucial importance. They usually take place in a recreation and training centre in Horní Bečva, and in terms of time their extent is considerably larger than the usual one-day-per-month tutorials at other schools. The students can also take part in a number of workshops and long-term photography projects. The Bachelor‘s degree of Creative Photography at the ICP is very universal, and besides the most stressed individual creative activities, it includes practical exercises in all the main areas of artistic, documentary photography, press photography and applied photography as well as lectures in the history and theory of photography, photography criticism, the fine arts, psychology, sociology and other theoretical subjects. Only the graduates of the bachelor course are accepted to the Master‘s degree of Creative Photography. According to their focus they can choose optional subjects about artistic, documentary and applied photography. The graduates get a complete university qualification in all domains of photography as well as history and theory of photography, and are prepared for tasks of their profession and their own photography creation. A number of graduates undertake a career of independent photographers, press photographers, teachers at schools of photography, curators and photography critics and theoreticians. Many students and graduates have won important awards, for example in 2000, Evžen Sobek, a fifth year student, was awarded the main prize in MIO Photo, the International Competition of Young Photographers to 35 years in Osaka. The study at the ICP has been in high demand, and in recent years not only by applicants from the Czech Republic but also from Slovakia, Poland, Germany, Italy, Russia and Ukraine. All lectures are provided in the Czech language only.
The ICP prepares photography expositions of students‘ works and also of prominent Czech and foreign photographers. The expositions of the ICP students are held in exhibition halls in the Czech Republic but also abroad (i.e. in Opava, Ostrava, Prague, Brno, Zlín, Prostějov, Bratislava, Poznań, Katowice, Vilnius, Kaunas, Würzburg, Bombay and other cities).
