Elegance and Pose. F.C. Gundlach’s Fashion Photography 1950-1970

Shenzhen Art Museum

27 October to 6 November 2016

F.C. Gundlach, one of Germany’s most significant post-war fashion photographers, set the stage for the ever-changing vogues, defined postures and gestures of models, chose props and locations and thus reflected the ideals of beauty and fashion against changing background. Gundlach’s oeuvre covers fashion and style from 1950s Paris Haute Couture to Prêt-à-Porter, and from Berlin Chic to the colorful designs of the 1980s.

F.C. Gundlach has always been a contract photographer. His work deals with aesthetic, social and cultural questions and reflects on how to convey fashion through photography. Working for widely read magazines such as Film und Frau (1952-1966) and Brigitte (1963-1986), he formed the perception of fashion not only in Germany. Vice versa, his photographs reflect the spirit of the time – from the optimistic postwar years to the beginning of postmodernism.

The 55 works and 100 cover pages of the exhibition Elegance and Pose - F.C. Gundlach’s Fashion Photography 1950-1970 can be seen as the essence of his life’s work between documentary and invention, applied photography and artistic claim. Thus, the exhibition presents a great photographer who was capable of defying the “clotted discrepancy between the sterile and the useful“ (Th. W. Adorno) of photographic art.

F.C. Gundlach developed his specific pictorial language in close contact and exchange with the aesthetic standards set by professional photographers in Germany, France and the USA, naming Martin Munkacsi, Erwin Blumenfeld and Irving Penn as his role models. Additionally, he kept incorporating the changes of contemporary art into his photographs: surrealism and film noir in the 1950s, later Op Art and Pop Art. His aesthetics are characterized by strict reduction of photographic means and stylistic conciseness. Paris and Berlin, New York and Beirut, the Egyptian desert, the Canaries, the ancient cultures of South America and Asia became the stages for F.C. Gundlach’s fashion photography on location – and were thus unlocked for the fascinated readership of the magazines. On location he found his inspiration for exceptional compositions. The photographs of F.C. Gundlach cover almost 50 years of (Western) German history in the face of fashion, film and art, inextricably mixing realities, projections, dreams and desires. His first publications were reportages. Starting in fashion photography in 1951 he transferred his experience with reportage photography towards.

His photographs have been published in numerous magazines such as Deutsche Illustrierte, Stern, Revue, Quick, Elegante Welt, Film und Frau, Annabelle, Brigitte and Twen. For Film und Frau and Brigitte alone, F.C. Gundlach photographed more than 9.000 pages and 300 magazine covers.

The photographic work of F.C. Gundlach has been widely exhibited since 1951 (Librairie Jean Robert in St. German des Prés). The exhibition ModeWelten (1986) for example was on display in Bonn, Kassel, Hamburg, Graz, Paris, Rotterdam and many other locations. His retrospective exhibition F.C. Gundlach – The photographic Work has been very successful in the House of Photography Hamburg (2008), the Martin- Gropius-Bau Berlin (2009) and the Neues Museum Nürnberg (2011). On the occasion of his 90. birthday in 2016 he presented his most recent exhibitions at Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin.

In addition to his own photographing, F.C. Gundlach was an active promoter and initiator in all areas of photography: He founded the photo service companies, CCD and PPS as well as one of the first photo-galleries in Germany; he became a teacher at the university of Berlin (UdK); he is an important collector and a curator of exhibitions such as Das Medium der Photographie ist berechtigt, Denkanstöße zu geben at the Kunstverein Hamburg and Emotions & Relations in the Kunsthalle Hamburg. In 2003 he was appointed Founding Firector of the House of Photography Hamburg and gave his collection under the title “The human image in photography” as a permanent loan to the Museum. There, he presented the numerous exhibitions such as A Clear Vision and The Heartbeat of Fashion consisting of works from his outstanding collection as well as monographic and thematic exhibitions such as Corpus Christi, Martin Parr and last but not least Martin Munkacsi – Think while you shoot.

In 2000, F.C. Gundlach committed his extensive photographic collection and his own photographic oeuvre to the F.C. Gundlach Foundation. The Foundation will preserve and present the archives in received.

Curator: Sebastian Lux, born 1971 in Göttingen. art historian and curator. Since 2003 curator and managing director of the F.C. Gundlach Foundation. Numerous exhibitions and catalogues, recently Peter Keetman – Shaping the World (2016), Vanity (2012) F.C. Gundlach (2011) and Martin Munkacsi (2011).

A Cooperation with the
Shenzhen International Photography Week
Shenzhen Art Museum