The F.C. Gundlach Collection
Over many decades, F.C. Gundlach, one of the most important fashion photographers after 1945, collected photography and put together one of the most important private photography collections in Germany.
"Collecting is a creative act, a method of self-awareness and a possibility to participate in the passions of others. A collector selects subjectively without regard to proportion or obligation towards the public. Selection criteria can be not only the intellectual approach to a particular era or theme, but more importantly an emotional approach: The joy to live with a certain, special work of art. However a collection without a concept is just an accumulation. Focused on one style, one topic or subject collecting can become a personal resumé and a critical or affirmative commentary on tendencies in contemporary art. In the course of time and under the impression of personal and social changes a collection evolves like a living organism. Today the main emphasis of my collection lies in pictures depicting people in their temporality and fragility." (F.C. Gundlach)
The collection is preserved by the F.C. Gundlach Foundation, founded in 2000, and made accessible to the public through exhibitions and publications.
Collection Profile
One focus of the collection, comprising almost 15.00 pieces, is fashion photography in its broadest sense. From its early period, the collection includes convolutions from art photography around 1900 as well as from fashion photography of the 1920s and 1930s, for example works by Baron de Meyer, Madame D' Ora, George Hoyningen-Huene, Erwin Blumenfeld, Yva and Imre von Santho. In recent years, there has also been an increased focus on the early period of photography in general, represented by works by photographers such as David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Julia Margeret Cameron, and Adolphe Eugène Disderi.
Fashion photography in Germany after the Second World War, on the other hand, is represented by extensive convolutes by Regina Relang, Hubs Flöter, Norbert Leonard, and Sonja Georgi; lifestyle and fashion photography of the 1970s and 1980s is represented by authors such as Christian von Alvensleben, Peter Lindbergh, and Ellen von Unwerth.
The international standing of the collection is demonstrated in this segment by numerous works by Horst P. Horst, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Norman Parkinson, Lilian Bassman, William Klein, Frank Horvat, David LaChapelle and others.
Fashion photography — as a visualization of the zeitgeist, as manifested in poses, gestures, facial expressions, and clothing — always reflects the attitude to life of an era. In this respect, the collection also includes photographers who extend far beyond the genre of fashion photography and document a constantly changing lifestyle in their work. These include Gabriele and Helmut Nothhelfer, Diane Arbus, Neal Slavin, Ralph Gibson, Larry Clark, Joel Peter Witkin, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Mark Morrisroe, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, and Wolfgang Tillmans.
Nude photography also occupies an important place in the collection with larger convolutes: these include Wilhelm von Gloeden, Bill Brandt, Allan Jones, Eikoh Hosoe, Les Krims, Robert Mapplethorpe, Shinya Fujiwara, Nobuyoshi Araki and Bruce Weber.
In the fields of documentary photography and street photography, works by the following photographers are represented: Barbara Klemm, Sebãstiao Salgado, Josef Koudelka, Antanas Sutkus and Evgenij Mochorev.
Finally, the collection includes works by visual artists who experiment and work with the medium of photography. Examples are Jürgen Klauke, Walter Dahn, Georg Herold, Günther Förg, Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen, and Thomas Locher, as well as Andy Warhol, Fischli und Weiss, Christopher Williams, Zoe Leonard, John Waters, and Jenny Holzer.
The collection also includes extensive holdings of abstract, subjective and artistic photography, which are also represented by works of Peter Keetman, Toni Schneiders and Wilfried Bauer. Beginning with protagonists of the twenties such as Hein Gorny or Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, these range from Kilian Breier to young positions such as Edgar Leciejewski and Pepa Hristova.