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F.C. GUNDLACH

(1926 – 2021)

A Tribute


Sfeier-Semler Gallery, August 13 - 28


Photography defined his life, it was his passion and his elixir of life.
Now F.C. Gundlach has died on July 23, 2021 at the age of 95.

F.C. Gundlach (Prof. Franz Christian Gundlach, born July 16, 1926 in Heinebach) was considered the grand seigneur of German fashion photography. F.C. Gundlach photographed stars like Romy Schneider, Curd Jürgens, Jean-Luc Godard and Cary Grant. For more than four decades, he shaped our collective image of fashion and people. He traveled around the world for Lufthansa, his photographs were published by the thousands and can be seen today in renowned museums and galleries.

Since the early 1980s, F.C. Gundlach's attention focused on collecting photography and conceiving photographic exhibitions and book publications. As a collector, benefactor, and founding director of the House of Photography at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, he has championed all aspects and forms of expression of his medium as a cultural asset.

Numerous awards and honors such as the Honorary Professorship of the HFBK, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Henri Nannen Award distinguish his efforts around the medium of photography. In order to secure his life's work and his extensive collection in perpetuity, he established the F.C. Gundlach Foundation in 2000. This foundation is dedicated to the preservation of his collection and his life's work. With the founding of the House of Photography in 2003, he made his collection available to the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg on permanent loan.

F.C. Gundlach was active into old age: as a producer of renowned national and international exhibition projects, promoter of young talents, keeper of extraordinary photographic estates, as well as advisor and visionary in the sense of the medium of photography. Wim Wenders on F.C. Gundlach: "No one embodies photography in this country like you do. What photography means in Germany is shaped by you, as a tightrope walker between fiction and reality, by your eye, your alert mind, your feeling for the contemporary, the present, the historically relevant, as well as the new, innovative, future."

His legacy will live on.

The exhibition is a spontaneous cooperation between the F.C. Gundlach Foundation and the Sfeier-Semler Gallery. 
A tribute to F.C. Gundlach, who wrote four decades of photography history with his ouevre.

Sfeier-Semler Gallery
Admiralitätstrasse 71
D-20459 Hamburg

040 37 51 99 40
galerie@sfeir-semler.com