FC Gundlach

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Franz Christian Gundlach (born July 16, 1926 in Heinebach , Hesse , † July 23, 2021 in Hamburg ) was a German photographer , gallery owner , collector , curator and benefactor . Since September 2003 he has been the founding director of the House of Photography in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

His fashion photographs of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, which repeatedly dealt with social phenomena and current trends in the visual arts , have often become icons, have left their origins behind and found their way into museums and collections. He has been with the PPS since 1975. Galerie FC Gundlach, later put together internationally acclaimed photographic exhibitions for many Hamburg and Berlin museums. On the occasion of the reopening of the redesigned House of Photography, he curated the retrospective of the Hungarian photographer Martin Munkácsi in April 2005 , most recently the exhibition More Than Fashion for theMoscow House of Photography and Vanity for the Kunsthalle Wien 2011. His collection of photographic works under the title The Image of People in Photography is one of the most important private photo collections in Germany and is available to the House of Photography on permanent loan . Since 2003, the holdings of his collection have included the exhibitions A Clear Vision , The Heartbeat of Fashion , American Beauties and Maloney, Meyerowitz, Shore, Sternfeld. New Color Photography of the 1970s presented.

biography

Fashion photographer

FC Gundlach photographed for Film und Frau in Berlin 1955, model Grit Hübscher, stole by Staebe-Seger, photo: Charlotte Rohrbach .
Gundlach mausoleum with photo scene of Gundlach (1966, Pyramiden von Gizeh) at the Ohlsdorf cemetery , designed by Roland Poppensieker during Gundlach's lifetime

Gundlach's passion for photography was aroused at the age of ten, when he got his first camera, an Agfa box . After graduating from school - as one of the penultimate contingent he had to experience the final phase of the war as a soldier - he learned the trade after the end of the war from 1946 to 1949 at the private photography school Private Lehranstalt für Moderne Lichtbildkunst with Rolf W. Nehrdich in Kassel. Until 1952 he worked as an assistant to various photo studios, including Ingeborg Hoppe in Stuttgart and Harry Meerson in Paris.

As a freelance photographer, he has mainly published theater and film reports in magazines such as Deutsche Illustrierte , Stern , Quick and Revue since 1949 . His specialization in fashion photography in a journalistic style began in 1953 when he worked for the Hamburg magazine Film und Frau , for which he mainly photographed the fashion of German fashion designers, the Parisian haute couture and repeatedly fur campaigns. One focus of his work was fashion reports with film stars in fashion and artist portraits by Romy Schneider , Hildegard Knef , Dieter Borsche and Jean-Luc Godard, among others . For film and women , but also for Stern , for Annabelle , Twen and other magazines, FC Gundlach undertook fashion and reportage trips to the Near, Middle and Far East as well as to Central and South America. As part of an exclusive contract with Brigitte magazine , he photographed many of the trend-setting fashion parts until 1983, a total of more than 160 title covers and 5,000 pages of editorial fashion parts. In the seventies and eighties, he traveled to locations in South America and Africa, but above all to New York and the American west coast.

His retrospective solo exhibitions such as ModeWelten (1985), The Pose as Body Language (1999), Images Make Mode (2004) and FC Gundlach. The photographic work (2008) was shown in many museums and galleries at home and abroad.

“He is a photographer whose images determine the knowledge of the dominant role of fashion as a cultural factor in society. That is why he seldom portrayed the phenomena of fashion in isolation, but rather linked them with the phenomenology of everyday reality and placed them in the socio-cultural context from which it ultimately originates. FC Gundlach proves to be a photographic artist with a will to style, as a master of staging, who confidently disposes of the surface of the photographic image and organizes his objects in ever new formal constellations: as a photographer of exceptional aesthetic quality. "

- Klaus Honnef : Speech at the opening of the exhibition ModeWelten in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn in 1986.

“As a fashion photographer who uses the recording medium for his productions, the photographer has to live, think and feel entirely in his time. Fashion photographs are always interpretations and stagings. They reflect and visualize the zeitgeist of the present and anticipate that of tomorrow. They offer projection surfaces for identification, but also for dreams, wishes and longings. And yet fashion photographs say more about a time than documentary photographs that pretend to have depicted reality. "

- FC Gundlach : Speech at the opening of the FC Gundlach exhibition . The photographic work in the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, November 19, 2009.

Entrepreneur, gallery owner, curator

In order to improve the infrastructure for photographers in Germany, he founded the company CC (Creative Color GmbH) in 1967, and soon afterwards the photographic service company PPS. (Professional Photo Service) with black and white and color laboratories, equipment trading, rental studios and specialist bookstores. In 1975 he expanded the company to include PPS. Galerie FC Gundlach , one of the first pure photo galleries in Germany.

In the PPS. Gallery, FC Gundlach presented more than 100 exhibitions from 1975 to 1992, among others. by Irving Penn and Richard Avedon , by Joel-Peter Witkin and Robert Mapplethorpe , by Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen , by Nan Goldin and Wolfgang Tillmans . Since the early 1980s, his attention has increasingly focused on collecting photographic works and designing photographic exhibitions. The exhibitions The medium photography is entitled to give food for thought in the Hamburger Kunstverein 1989, Berlin en Vogue in the Berlinische Galerie 1993, fashion pictures, picture fashion / Zeitgeist becomes form for the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (Ifa) 1995, the German eye in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg 1996, Emotions & Relations in the Kunsthalle Hamburg 1998, Where no eye can see in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg 1999 and Mode - Körper - Mode in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg 2000.

After many years as a lecturer, F. C. Gundlach was appointed professor at the Berlin University of the Arts in 1988 . As a lobbyist for photography, he founded the Working Group Photography Hamburg e. V. and initiated the 1st Triennial of Photography in Hamburg in 1999 , which has taken place every three years since then (2002: Reality Check ; 2005: Archive of the Present ; 2008: Say Cheese ; 2011: Wechselspiel. Foto-Film-Foto ). He was a member of the Free Academy of the Arts Hamburg .

Benefactor

In order to secure his life's work and his extensive photo collection The Image of Man in Photography in the long term and to enable active, scientific and creative use of all his photographic assets, he founded the FC Gundlach Foundation in 2000 , whose purpose is to promote art and science and research in the field of photography, particularly the promotion of photography as a cultural asset.

From September 2003 to the end of 2005, FC Gundlach was the founding director of the House of Photography in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, which has taken up the collection The Image of People in Photography as a permanent loan. There he showed, among others, Corpus Christi - depictions of Christ from three centuries of photography (2003), Martin Parr - Photographische Werke 1971–2001 (2004), Martin Munkacsi - Think while you shoot (2005) and Barbara Klemm - artist portraits 1968–2004 (2005) . On September 26, 2006, the exhibition The Heartbeat of Fashion - Photographic Works from the FC Gundlach Collection opened there.

death

On July 23, 2021, Gundlach died in Hamburg at the age of 95 in a retirement home, where his last exhibition took place.

Collection FC Gundlach "The Image of Man in Photography"

The image of man was the subject of photographic work from the very beginning. In the FC Gundlach Collection, particular importance is attached to those photographic works which, beyond their historical status as contemporary documents, open up new perspectives on the dignity and vulnerability of human beings.

In a special way, photography testifies to the changing view of people. One focus of the collection is therefore photographs that reflect the image of people in their external appearance - in fashions, poses, facial expressions and gestures. The broad definition of fashion as a zeitgeist on which the collection is based also requires consideration of those photographs that are not to be interpreted as fashion photographs in the narrower sense, but which reflect contemporary witnesses.

Another focus within the collection are images of people by visual artists working with photography, which accentuate the dialogic character of the medium.

Honors and prizes

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions

  • 1951: FC Gundlach . Librairie Jean Robert, Paris
  • 1986: ModeWelten , Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn ; 1986 New Gallery Kassel; 1986 Berlin University of the Arts; 1987 Museum for Art and Commerce Hamburg; 1988 Kunstverein Frankfurt am Main; 1988 Photo Forum Bremen; 1988 Kunstverein Erlangen; 1989 New Gallery of the Joanneum Graz; 1990 Goethe Institute Paris; 1990 Goethe Institute Nancy; Marseille, Rotterdam and others O.
  • 1992: The Story of the Pose . Mois de l'image Nancy
  • 1997: Zeitgeist Becomes Form . American Fine Art New York
  • 1999: The pose as body language , Photo Museum Braunschweig; 2000 Kunstverein Halle Saale; 2001 Moscow House of Photography; 2001 State Museums in Berlin - Art Library; 2003 Municipal Gallery Iserlohn
  • 2001: FC Gundlach - A Passion for Photography . Gallery Kicken Berlin
  • 2004: Sophisticated Lady . Bread & Butter Berlin
  • 2004: Pictures make fashion . New gallery of the Joanneum Graz
  • 2004: The pose as body language II . Little church in Heinebach
  • 2004: FC Gundlach - fashion and portraits . focus gallery Cologne
  • 2005: the sixties . Zephyr - Room for Photography Mannheim
  • 2005: Voting Favor - Voting Art. The sovereign's little revenge . Chicken Post Hamburg
  • 2006: Color . Gallery Kicken Berlin
  • 2006: Fashion Photography . Gallery 206 Berlin
  • 2008: FC Gundlach. The photographic work. House of Photography - Deichtorhallen Hamburg
  • 2009: FC Gundlach. The photographic work. Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin
  • 2010: FC Gundlach. The photographic work. New Museum Nuremberg
  • 2011: Berlin transit 2011 , Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin
  • 2011: The Middle East in the 50s and 60s , Sfeir-Semler Gallery Beirut
  • 2012: FC Gundlach. Berlin - Paris . Kulturhaus Osterfeld Pforzheim
  • 2014: high fashion . Lempertz auction house, Cologne
  • 2014: FC Gundlach in Brazil - fashion and reportage photography . Nordhorn City Museum
  • 2014: Kunsthaus Alte Mühle, Schmallenberg
  • 2015: On the Wings of Fashion . AbtArt, Stuttgart
  • 2016: 90 years - 90 pictures . CFA Gallery Berlin
  • 2016: Eyes on Paris . Dear Photography, Hamburg
  • 2016 Elegance and Pose , Shenzhen Art Museum, Shenzhen
  • 2018: Around the World in Fashion . Interconti, Düsseldorf
  • 2019: Generation Gundlach. Formative works by a master of fashion photography , Elbschloss Residenz, Hamburg
  • 2019: 500,000 miles - around the world with FC Gundlach , Photo Bastion Zurich
  • 2019–2020: Big Shots - photographic icons by FC Gundlach , Petra Gut Contemporary, Zurich
  • 2019–2020: South America - FC Gundlach , Flo Peters Gallery, Hamburg
  • 2021: FC Gundlach at Work , Elbschloss Residenz, Hamburg

  Source: 

Participation in exhibitions

  • 1975: Photography 1929-1975. Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart
  • 1979: German photography after '45. Art Association Kassel
  • 1982: Light images - the portrait in photography. Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn
  • 1983: 50s fashion photography. PPS. Gallery Hamburg and others O.
  • 1985: Development years - 3 photographers: Fritz Eschen , FC Gundlach, Otto Borutta . Berlinische Galerie
  • 1985: The self-portrait in the age of photography. Musée Cantonal Lausanne and others O.
  • 1985: 50 years of modern color photography 1936-1986. Photokina Cologne
  • 1993: Berlin en Vogue. Berlinische Galerie; 1993 Museum for Arts and Crafts Hamburg; 1993 Photo Museum Munich
  • 1995: Bildermode - fashion pictures. German fashion photography 1945-1995. Art Library Berlin; 1995 Kunsthalle Bremen ; 1996 Corgin Gallery Washington; 1996 Boston Art Institute; 1997 Pat Hearn / Morris Healy Gallery New York; Milan, Rome, Genoa, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Singapore, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Petersburg and others. O.
  • 1996: Twen. City Museum Munich ; 1996 Kunsthaus Hamburg, 2002 Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte Madrid and others. O.
  • 1997: Someone else with my fingerprints. David Zwirner Gallery New York et al. O.
  • 1999: Where no eye can see. Deichtorhallen Hamburg
  • 2000: Fashion - Body - Fashion. Museum of Arts and Crafts Hamburg
  • 2001: Fashion ambassadors. Art Library Berlin
  • 2002: Self-portraits of Hamburg photographers. Altonaer Museum Hamburg
  • 2003: Of bodies and other things. City Gallery Prague; 2004 Museum Bochum ; 2004 German Historical Museum Berlin ; 2004 House of Photography Moscow
  • 2004: Parameter of Life. Wörlen Passau Foundation
  • 2004: Face to Face. Langhans Gallery Prague
  • 2005: Entrez lentement. Politecnico di Milano
  • 2005: My private Heroes. MARTa Herford
  • 2005: The fifties - everyday culture and design. Museum of Arts and Crafts Hamburg
  • 2005: Bridal Fashion Show. Altonaer Museum Hamburg
  • 2010: The Heartbeat of Fashion as inspired by FC Gundlach. Howard Greenberg Gallery New York
  • 2010: Fashion. Story of a Lifetime. Empty Quarter Gallery Dubai
  • 2011: Vanity. Kunsthalle Vienna
  • 2013: Vanity . Muzeum Naradowe / National Museum, Krakow
  • 2014: Three . Hagedorn Foundation Gallery, Atlanta
  • 2014: Steel icons . Prototype car museum , Hamburg
  • 2015: The medium is entitled to give food for thought . CFA Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
  • 2017 Vanity , Scop, Shanghai
  • 2018: The Shape of Light . Tate Modern, London
  • 2018: Icons of Style . Getty Museum, LA
  • 2019: Icons of Style . MFA Houston
  • 2019: Fashion and Fiction. In Dialogue with Helmut Newton , Kampa Museum Prague
  • 2021: Dressed for Success - 100 years of fashion photography . Falsterbo Photo Art Museum

  Source: 

Publications as editor and curator

  • (Ed.): From the New Look to the Petticoat. German fashion photography of the fifties. Berlin 1984.
  • with Kunstverein Hamburg (ed.): "The medium of photography is entitled to give food for thought." The FC Gundlach Collection. Exhibition cat. Kunstverein Hamburg, Hamburg 1989.
  • (Ed.), PPS and Richter-Verlag: "Zwischenzeiten, Bilder Ostdeutscher Photographen". Hamburg / Berlin / Düsseldorf 1991.
  • with Uli Richter (ed.): Berlin en vogue - Berlin fashion in photography. Exhibition cat. Berlinische Galerie, Tübingen / Berlin 1993.
  • (Conception and compilation): picture fashion-fashion pictures. German fashion photographs 1945-1995 . Exhibition cat. Institute for Foreign Relations , Stuttgart 1995.
  • (Ed. As chairman of the working group Photography Hamburg eV): The German eye. 33 photographers and their reports. 33 glimpses of our century. Exhibition cat. Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Hamburg 1996.
  • Hamburger Kunsthalle (ed.): Emotions & Relations. Nan Goldin , David Armstrong, Mark Morrisroe, Jack Pierson and Philip-Lorca diCorcia . Exhibition cat. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg 1998.
  • with Wilhelm Schürmann and the Photography Working Group Hamburg e. V. (Ed.): Where no eye can see. About the discovery of the invisible. Exhibition cat. Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Hamburg 1999.
  • with Claudia Gabriele Philipp (Ed.): Mode-Körper-Mode. Photographs of a century. (= Documents of photography, 5.) Exhibition cat. Museum of Arts and Crafts Hamburg, Hamburg 2000.
  • (Ed.): Martin Munkácsi . Think while you shoot! Retrospective. Exhibition catalog, House of Photography - Deichtorhallen Hamburg. Steidl, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 978-3-86521-099-9 .
  • (Eds.), Pepa Hristova (photos), Sophia Greiff, Danail Yankov (text): Sworn Virgins . Kehrer, Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86828-347-1 .
  • (Ed.): Peter Keetman . Designed world. Exhibition catalog. Published by Museum Folkwang and the FC Gundlach Foundation. Steidl, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95829-204-8 . Cutouts .

Literature (selection)

Monographs on the work

  • Klaus Honnef (ed.): ModeWelten. F. C. Gundlach. Photographs 1950 to today. Exhibition cat. Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn. Berlin 1986; also Verlag Frölich and Kaufmann, Berlin 1985, ISBN 978-3-88725-197-0 .
  • Benedikt Taschen Verlag (without ed.): F. C. Gundlach - Fashion Photography 1950–1975. Cologne 1989.
  • National Museums in Berlin (ed.): F. C. Gundlach - The pose as body language. Exhibition cat. State Museums in Berlin - Art Library. Cologne 2001.
  • Landesmuseum Joanneum - Image and sound archive (ed.): Images make fashion - F. C. Gundlach. Exhibition cat. Landesmuseum Joanneum , Graz 2004.
  • Hans-Michael Koetzle, Klaus Honnef, Sebastian Lux, Ulrich Rüter (eds.): FC Gundlach. The photographic work. Goettingen 2008.

Interviews with and articles about FC Gundlach (excerpt)

  • When the Knef was still in fashion ... In: fotoMAGAZIN , 11/1983
  • Ulf Erdmann-Ziegler: Structure - appearance and being. Three photographers in the Berlinische Galerie. In: the daily newspaper , August 20, 1985.
  • Hans Scheurer: FC Gundlach - Fashion Worlds. In: Profifoto , 4/1986.
  • Peter Sager , Timm Rautert: The beautiful ones from the darkroom. In: Zeit-Magazin , 15/1989.
  • 30 years of staged reality. The story of the fashion photographer FC Gundlach. In: foto-scene , 1/1990.
  • Milan Chlumsky: Longing for Meaning. As a foundation: Gundlach's Hamburg fashion photography collection. In: FAZ , November 18, 1991.
  • Margit Tabel-Gerster: Hamburg personalities. Hamburg 1994.
  • Friedrich Carl Piepenburg: The Charm of the Early Years. In: Merian Extra, undated
  • Photo appointment without a camera. Conversation with Robert Lebeck . In: art , 6/1996.
  • A collector's sorrows and passions. In: Peter Weiermair (ed.): Aspects and Perspectives of Photography. Regensburg 1996.
  • What matters is whether a picture appeals to me. In: Michael Koetzle (ed.): The photo, art and collector's object. Augsburg 1997.
  • I am my own producer. In: Phototechnik international , 3/1997.
  • Christiane Wettig: Profession with an enormous amount of non-presence. In: Welt am Sonntag , April 25, 1999.
  • Collector, donor, instigator. In: black and white , 27, 11/2000.
  • Michael Koetzle: The tireless promoter. In: Phototechnik international , 4/2001.
  • Take off your eye's uniform. In: art , 2/2002.
  • FC Gundlach . In: Tout va bien , 2/2002.
  • Allow me: Mister Photography . In: art , 4/2002.
  • FC Gundlach. About discovering - collecting - preserving. In: Designers Digest , March 2003.
  • Ed Hirsch: Discovery: FC Gundlach. In: American Photo , March / April 2003.
  • Motive: human. In: art , 11/2003.
  • Timo Scherer: The decisive factor is the effect. In: German Magazine , 01.
  • Matthias Gretzschel : Star photographer in an interview with Abendblatt. FC Gundlach: A picture of a man. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , July 19, 2011.
  • Holger Liebs: Romy or Hilde? Interview in: Monopol , November 2015, pp. 73f.
  • Annette Stiekele: A life dedicated to photography and collecting. In: Museumswelt , Hamburg, September 2016, p. 9.
  • NN: FC Gundlach becomes 90th Grand Seigneur of German photography. In: art - Das Kunstmagazin , July 14, 2016.
  • dpa : Grand master of German photography. FC Gundlach turns 90. In: Monopol , July 16, 2016.
  • Karin Schulze: Geniuses among themselves. On its 90th birthday, FC Gundlach opens its photographic treasure trove. In: Vogue , 2016, No. 12, pp. 154 to 234, issue.
  • Ulrich Rüter: Perfect reduction. In: LFI Leica Photography International , 2016, No. 5, pp. 16–25, issue preview.
  • Matthias Gretzschel : FC Gundlach: My pictures 2016. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , supplement: more Hamburg. The magazine for the weekend , December 31, 2016, No. 52.
  • NN Pianeta Eros. In: Glamor Italia , No. 286, March 2016.
  • Uta Baier: The FC Gundlach Collection. “Collecto-Holic” with a vision. In: ArsPrototo , the magazine of the Kulturstiftung der Länder, 2/2016
  • Ulf Erdmann-Ziegler: Room with a View . Photos: Andreas Mühe . In: Blau - An art magazine , supplement to Die Welt , 16/2016.
  • Herlinde Koelbl : “I wanted to get out into the world.” In: ZEITmagazin , August 7, 2016, No. 30, interview.
  • Katharina Pfannkuch: Very close to the master. In: Welt am Sonntag , November 26, 2017, beginning of the article.
  • Tomasz Kurianovicz, Marc Widmann: "That I survived was twice very lucky". In: Die Zeit , October 4, 2018, p. 4.
  • Ralf Hanselle: Living Legends. In: fotoMAGAZIN , October 10, 2018, pp. 18–19.

Movie

  • FC Gundlach - master of fashion photography. Documentary, Germany, 2017, 26:09 min., Script and director: Eva Gerberding, production: NDR , arte , first broadcast: February 11, 2018 on arte, synopsis by ARD .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. A life for photography: FC Gundlach died , abendblatt.de, July 25, 2021
  2. Grabmal FC Gundlach , rolandpoppensieker.de
  3. ^ Munzinger Archive GmbH, Ravensburg: FC Gundlach - Munzinger Biography. Retrieved September 9, 2018 .
  4. Honnef quoted in: Photographer FC Gundlach. In: fcgundlach.de , accessed on February 13, 2018.
  5. Gundlach quoted in: Biography. In: Gundlach Foundation , accessed on February 13, 2018.
  6. A life for photography: FC Gundlach died , abendblatt.de, July 25, 2021
  7. exhibitions. In: fcgundlach.de .
  8. ↑ Participation in exhibitions. In: fcgundlach.de .