F. C. Gundlach


F. C. Gundlach is a German photographer, gallery owner, collector, curator und founder. In 2000 he created the F.C. Gundlach Foundation, since 2003 he has been founding director of the House of Photography – Deichtorhallen Hamburg.
His fashion photographs of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, which in many cases integrated social phenomena and current trends in the visual arts, have left their context of origin behind and found their way into museums and collections. Since 1975 he also curated many internationally renowned photographic exhibitions. On the occasion of the reopening of the House of Photography in April 2005, he curated the retrospective of the Hungarian photographer Martin Munkácsi. Here, the exhibitions A Clear Vision, The Heartbeat of Fashion and Maloney, Meyerowitz, Shore, Sternfeld. New Color Photography of the 1970s from his collection were presented since 2003. Most recently he curated the exhibitions More Than Fashion for the Moscow House of Photography and Vanity for the Kunsthalle Wien 2011.

Biography

The fashion photographer

F. C. Gundlach attended the Private Lehranstalt für Moderne Lichtbildkunst under Rolf W. Nehrdich in Kassel from 1946 to 1949. Subsequently, he began publishing theatre and film reports in magazines such as Deutsche Illustrierte, Stern, Quick and Revue as a freelance photographer.
His specialization in fashion photography began in 1953 with his work for the Hamburg-based magazine Film und Frau, for which he photographed German fashion, Parisian haute couture and fur fashion campaigns. Additionally he photographed portraits of artists such as Romy Schneider, Hildegard Knef, Dieter Borsche and Jean-Luc Godard. For Film und Frau, but also for Stern, Annabelle, Twen and other magazines, F. C. Gundlach has since made fashion and reportage trips to the Near, Middle and Far East as well as to Central and South America. Under an exclusive contract with the magazine Brigitte, he photographed many of the trendsetting fashion pages until 1983, a total of more than 160 covers and 5,000 pages of editorial fashion. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked in South America, Africa, but above all in New York and on the American west coast.
His retrospective solo exhibitions, such as ModeWelten, Die Pose als Körpersprache, Bilder machen Mode or F. C. Gundlach. The photographic work were shown in many museums and galleries in Germany and abroad.

The entrepreneur, gallery owner, curator

In order to improve the infrastructure for photographers in Germany, he founded CC in 1967 and soon afterwards the photographic service company PPS. with black and white and colour laboratories, equipment shop, rental studios and a specialist bookshop. In 1975 he expanded the company to include the PPS. Galerie F.C. Gundlach, one of the first pure photo galleries in Germany.
In the PPS. Gallery, F. C. Gundlach presented more than 100 exhibitions from 1975 to 1992 by Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, Joel-Peter Witkin and Robert Mapplethorpe, Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen, Nan Goldin and Wolfgang Tillmans, among others. Since the early 1980s, his attention focused on his collection of photographic works and the conception of photographic exhibitions. Many of these exhibitions consisted completely or in parts of his collection, e.g. Das Medium Fotografie ist berechtigt, Denkanstöße zu geben at the Hamburger Kunstverein 1989, Berlin en Vogue at the Berlinische Galerie 1993, Modebilder, Bildermode / Zeitgeist becomes Form for the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen 1995, Emotions & Relations at the Kunsthalle Hamburg 1998, Wohin kein Auge reicht at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg 1999 and Mode – Körper – Mode at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg 2000.
After many years as a lecturer, F. C. Gundlach was appointed professor at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin in 1988. As a lobbyist for photography he initiated the Triennial of Photography in Hamburg in 1999.

The founder

In order to create a safe haven for his life's work and his extensive photo collection and to enable the active work with his entire photographic legacy, he created the F. C. Gundlach Foundation in 2000. Its purpose is the promotion of art, science and research in the field of photography, in particular the promotion of photography as a cultural asset.
Since September 2003 F. C. Gundlach is founding director of the House of Photography – Deichtorhallen Hamburg, where he installed his collection The Image of Man in Photography as a permanent loan.

The F.C. Gundlach collection ''The Image of Man in Photography''

The image of man has been topic in photography from the very beginning. The F. C. Gundlach collection attaches special importance to those photographic works that open up new perspectives on human dignity and vulnerability beyond their historical status as visual documents. Photography testifies to the ever-changing visual representation of mankind. A focal point of the collection are therefore photographs that reflect the image of man in his external appearance – in fashions, poses, facial expressions and gestures.
Works of visual artists using photography are of special interest, accentuating the dialogical character of the medium.

Honours and awards

Solo exhibitions (selection)

Monographs on F.C. Gundlachs