The Photographic Work

This definitive monograph brings together Gundlach’s fashion work for the first time and establishes him as a leading light of the industry. One of the most distinguished German fashion photographers of the post-war era, Gundlach wrote fashion history over a period of forty years. His work presents not only the evolution of clothing, but also the poses, gestures, props and locations, which have defined the changing idea of beauty over decades. Alongside this work, Gundlach also created emphatic portraits, reportages and travel photography. Gundlach has always considered himself a photographer on assignment, and his work for high-circulation magazines shaped the public’s perception of fashion. Yet his images also captured the spirit of their time, embodying the optimism of the meagre days after the war, through op and pop art to post-modernism. The Photographic Work is the long-awaited English edition of the original German book, which won a Silver Deutscher Fotobuchpreis in 2009. F.C. Gundlach was born in Heinebach, Germany in 1926, and his work portraits fashion from 1950 to 1990, from haute couture to prêt-à-porter, from Berlin’s tailoring to today’s unisex fashion. Working for magazines such as Film und Frau (1952–1966) and Brigitte (1963–1986), Gundlach was formative in determining the public perception of fashion at this time. His is the oeuvre of a great photographer who defied in Theodor W. Adorno’s words the “clotted discrepancy between the sterile and the useful” of visual imagery.