Big Shots – Photographic Icons from F.C. Gundlach

Petra Gut Contemporary Gallery, Zurich
November 15, 2019 to February 1, 2020

Opening Thursday, November 14, 2019, 6 to 8 pm

F.C. Gundlach is considered one of the greatest fashion photographers of his time. For over four decades, he captured fashion and people in his images, influencing entire generations with his photography like few others. The Petra Gut Contemporary gallery is showing the work of this influential photographer in the heart of Zurich.

F.C. Gundlach received his first camera as a gift at the age of ten. He collected autographed photos of celebrities, attentively studied the reports in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, and was determined to see the world and help shape the image people formed of it. After his training in Kassel, F.C. Gundlach worked as a freelance photojournalist in Stuttgart and assisted at the Hollywood studios in Wiesbaden. His first celebrity portraits, reports, and fashion articles appeared in radio and television magazines. In 1950, he visited Paris for the first time. The glittering boulevards of fashion captivated him and held him spellbound for the rest of his life.

From 1953 onwards, he photographed for the magazine "Film und Frau" (Film and Woman) . Here, he not only captured the elegant fashion of renowned couturiers but also photographed the great film stars of his time in home features and portrait sessions. Jean-Luc Godard, Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Hildegard Knef, Romy Schneider, and Cary Grant were among those who graced his lens. From the mid-1950s, F.C. Gundlach traveled the world for his fashion photography: he created the famous images of models wearing bathing caps in front of the pyramids, photographed the ruins of the temple towers of Angkor Wat and the futuristic architecture of Oscar Niemeyer's Brasília with the same visionary skill as he did the black-and-white Op Art silhouettes of the Parisian fashion houses Lend and Courrèges, or the legendary Space Age look of Cardin. F.C. Gundlach's distinctive and memorable style, combined with his minimalist visual language, led to photo spreads in leading magazines such as Quick , Stern , Annabelle , and Brigitte . He quickly became one of the most sought-after photographers of the second half of the 20th century.

Whether portrait or fashion photography, the focus of F.C. Gundlach's work is always on the human image. He is particularly drawn to photographing "large heads," as he calls this category within his oeuvre. The result is a series of striking portraits and close-ups characterized by an incredible intimacy with the subject—classics of authentic beauty.

When F.C. Gundlach laid down his camera in the late 1980s, his images did not lose their significance. Thanks to their clear and minimalist visual language, they resonate far beyond their original context. Many of them have become icons of photography. Even today, they are published in influential fashion magazines such as Vogue , Harper's Bazaar, and L'Officiel , and exhibited around the globe—from New York to Moscow, from Beirut to Shenzhen. Some are even part of renowned collections like the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Petra Gut Contemporary will host an opening reception on Thursday, November 14, 2019. The curators of the F.C. Gundlach Foundation, Jasmin Seck and Natalja Aljasova, will be present. Please send your registration by email to events@petragut.com

Gallery Petra Gut Contemporary
Nüschelerstrasse 31
8001 Zurich

Opening hours:
Wed - Fri 11:00 am – 6:00 pm | Sat 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
or by appointment by telephone on +41 (0) 44 422 40 69