Franz Christian Gundlach (16 July 1926 – 23 July 2021) was a German photographer, gallery owner, collector, curator and founder.
In 2000 Gundlach created the F.C. Gundlach Foundation, and since 2003 he has been founding director of the House of Photography at Deichtorhallen, in Hamburg.
Gundlach's fashion photographs of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, often integrating social phenomena and visual arts trends, are now found in museums and collections. Since 1975 he has curated many photographic exhibitions. On the reopening of the House of Photography in April 2005, Gundlach curated a retrospective of Martin Munkácsi.
Gundlach also organized exhibitions from his own collections including A Clear Vision, The Heartbeat of Fashion and Maloney, Meyerowitz, Shore, Sternfeld: New Color Photography of the 1970s. He curated the exhibitions More Than Fashion for the Moscow House of Photography, and Vanity for the Kunsthalle Wien in 2011.
Biography
Fashion photographer
F. C. Gundlach attended the Private Lehranstalt für Moderne Lichtbildkunst (Private School for Modern Photography) 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.
Gundlach's 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 Romy Schneider, Hildegard Knef, Dieter Borsche and Jean-Luc Godard.
For Film und Frau, but also for Stern, Annabelle, Twen and other magazines, Gundlach 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 Brigitte, he photographed more than 160 covers and 5,000 pages of editorial fashion. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked in South America, Africa, New York and on the American west coast.
Gundlach's retrospective solo exhibitions, such as ModeWelten (1985), Die Pose als Körpersprache (1999), Bilder machen Mode (2004) or F. C. Gundlach. The photographic work (2008) were shown in museums and galleries in Germany and abroad.
Entrepreneur, gallery owner, curator
Gundlach founded CC (Creative Color GmbH) in 1967 and soon afterwards the photographic service company PPS. (Professional Photo Service) 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, Gundlach presented more than 100 exhibitions from 1975 to 1992. The artists included Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, Joel-Peter Witkin and Robert Mapplethorpe, Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen, Nan Goldin and Wolfgang Tillmans. 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 (Ifa) 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, 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.
F. C. Gundlach Foundation and House of Photography
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 was founding director of the House of Photography – Deichtorhallen Hamburg, where he installed his collection The Image of Man in Photography as a permanent loan.