The F.C. Gundlach Collection comprises some 17,000 works and is one of the most important private photography collections in Germany. Nearly 9000 works under the title »The Human Image in Photography« are currently on permanent loan to the House of Photography.
The permanent loan encompasses photographs under the heading »Art Photography around 1900,« including photographs by Baron Adolphe de Meyer and Edward Steichen. Fashion photography from the 1920s and ’30s is represented by Martin Badekow, Dr. Paul Wolff, Wols, Yva, Horst P. Horst, and George Hoyningen-Huene. In addition, in recent years there has been an increasing focus on the early days of photography with works by André Adolphe-Eugène Disderi, David Octavius Hill, and Robert Adamson. Fashion photography after the Second World War is also represented with extensive groups of works by important international photographers, including Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman, Irving Penn, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Hubs Flöter, and Regina Relang.
As a visualization of the zeitgeist, fashion photography always reflects the atmosphere of a time. Thus, the collection also includes photographers who go far beyond the genre of fashion photography and document ever-changing lifestyles in their work, such as Erwin Blumenfeld, Guy Bourdin, David LaChapelle, William Klein, Olaf Martens, and Fergus Greer.
Nude photography is also represented in the collection with works by Robert Mapplethorpe, Harry Callahan, George Platt-Lynes, and Wilhelm von Gloeden. In the field of documentary photography the collection includes works by Barbara Klemm, Peter Dammann, and Rolf Gillhausen. There are also works of street photography by Martin Parr, Bruce Gilden, Leon Levinstein, Robert Frank, and Lee Friedlander.