Curator F.C. Gundlach

To improve production conditions for photographers in Germany, F.C. Gundlach founded the company CC (Creative Color) in 1967, soon followed by the photographic service company PPS. (Professional Photo Service) with black-and-white and colour laboratories, equipment trading, rental studios and a specialist bookshop in the Hamburg media bunker on Feldstraße. In 1975 he founded the PPS. Galerie F.C. Gundlach, one of the first galleries for photography in Germany. From 1975 to 1992, F.C. Gundlach presented more than 100 exhibitions here, among others of Irving Penn (1981) and Richard Avedon (1983), of Joel-Peter Witkin (1986) and Robert Mapplethorpe (1981), of Martin Kippenberger (1986, 1988, 1989) and Albert Oehlen (1988), of Bruce Weber (1987) and Sebastiao Salgado (1987), of Nan Goldin (1991) and Wolfgang Tillmans (1992).

From the beginning of the 1980s, his attention increasingly focused on collecting photographic works and designing photographic exhibitions for institutions and museums. His works included Das Medium Fotografie ist berechtigt, Denkanstöße zu geben (1989) at the Hamburger Kunstverein, Berlin en Vogue (1993) in cooperation with the Universität der Künste in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Modebilder, Bildermode / Zeitgeist becomes Form (1995) for the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Ifa), Das deutsche Auge (1996) at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Emotions & Relations (1998) at the Kunsthalle Hamburg, Wohin kein Auge reicht (1999) at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg and Mode – Körper – Mode (2000) at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.

On the occasion of the reopening of the House of Photography, which he conceived in 2003, at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, he showed the retrospective Think while you shoot! by the rediscovered Hungarian photographer Martin Munkacsi in April 2005, which subsequently made stops in Berlin, New York, San Francisco, Moscow, Budapest and Munich.

This was followed by The Heartbeat of Fashion (2006) at the Haus der Photographie, More Than Fashion (2011) for the Moscow House of Photography, Vanity (2011) for the Kunsthalle Wien, Peter Keetman – Gestaltete Welt (2016) for the Museum Folkwang and many more.

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 Arbeitskreis Photographie Hamburg e. V. in 1993 and initiated the 1st Triennale der Photographie in Hamburg in 1999, which has taken place every three years since then.