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فير زملر غاليري Sfeir-Semler Gallery

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, Hesse) was considered the grand seigneur of German fashion photography. For over four decades, he shaped our collective image of fashion and people. F.C. Gundlach photographed world stars such as Romy Schneider, Curd Jürgens, Jean-Luc Godard and Cary Grant. He traveled around the world for Lufthansa, his photographs were published thousands of times and can be seen today in renowned museums and galleries.

Since the early 1980s, F.C. Gundlach's attention has increasingly focused on collecting photographic works and conceiving photographic exhibitions and book publications. As a collector, benefactor, and founding director of the House of Photography at the Deichtorhallen, 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 Bundesverdienstkreuz 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: "Niemand verkörpert hierzulande die Photographie so wie Du. Was Photographie in Deutschland bedeutet, ist von Dir geprägt, als einem Drahtseilwanderer zwischen Fiktion und Realität, von deinem Auge, deinem wachen Verstand, deinem Gefühl für das Zeitgemäße, das Gegenwärtige, das historisch Relevante, ebenso wie das Neue, Innovative, Zukünftige"
(Translation: "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 long resonate.