Curator F.C. Gundlach

In order to improve the production conditions for photographers in Germany, F.C. Gundlach founded the company CC (Creative Color) in 1967, and soon after the photographic service company PPS. (Professional Photo Service) with black-and-white and color labs, equipment sales, rental studios, and a specialist bookstore in Hamburg's Media Bunker on Feldstraße. In 1975, he founded PPS. Galerie F.C. Gundlach, one of the first photography galleries in Germany, in 1976 the CCD gallery in Düsseldorf. F.C. Gundlach presented more than 200 exhibitions here from 1975 to 1992, including works by Irving Penn (1981) and Richard Avedon (1983), Joel-Peter Witkin (1986) and Robert Mapplethorpe (1981), Martin Kippenberger (1986, 1988, 1989) and Albert Oehlen (1988), Bruce Weber (1987) and Sebastiao Salgado (1987), Nan Goldin (1991), and Wolfgang Tillmans (1992).

Since the beginning of the 1980s, F.C. Gundlach's attention has increasingly focused on collecting photographic works and designing photographic exhibitions for institutions and museums. Among other things, Das Medium der Fotografie ist berechtigt, Denkanstöße zu geben (The medium of photography has the right to make you think, 1989) at Kunstverein in Hamburg, Berlin en Vogue (1993) in cooperation with the University of the Arts at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Modebilder, Bildermode / Zeitgeist becomes Form (1995) for the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Ifa), Das deutsche Auge (The German Eye, 1996) at Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Emotions & Relations (1998) at Kunsthalle Hamburg, Wohin kein Auge reicht (Where no eye can reach, 1999) at Deichtorhallen Hamburg and Mode – Körper – Mode (fashion – body – fashion, 2000) at Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.

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

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

As a lobbyist for photography, he founded the Arbeitskreis Photographie Hamburg e.V. in 1993 and initiated the first Triennial of Photography Hamburg in 1999, which has taken place every three years since then.