MODE:BILDER

31/01/2008

Photographs from the F.C. Gundlach collection
NRW Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft Düsseldorf
17 Nov 2007 – 24 Mar 2008

This exhibition changes the way we look at fashion photography—with almost 400 photographs by 100 photographers, taken between 1843 and 2006, it shows that fashion photography is more than merely the depiction of clothing.

The exhibition MODE:BILDER in the NRW Forum begins with the priceless images by Robert Adamson from the dawn of photography—an incunabulum of the history of photography.

These are followed, in rapid succession, by photographs from the belle époque—the Twenties and Thirties in Germany; photographs by artists such as Wols (Otto Wolfgang Schulze, a pioneer of the informal) collide with images of window displays at Peek & Cloppenburg; nude photographs give way to naturism—fashion is only recognizable here in hair and poses. Finally the first part of the exhibition closes with the grandiose black and white photographs by Richard Avedon. With him ends the era of elegance…

…only to continue in the second part of the exhibition with the voyeuristic, tangential, revolutionary photographs by Guy Bourdin. An antithesis with which a new era begins—the era of eccentricity and explicit imagery.

The selection of the nearly 400 works by 100 photographers taken between 1843 and 2006 in no way claims to be a representative overview of 160 years of fashion photography. It is, rather, a subjective extract of the F.C. Gundlach collection, influenced by the very personal view of the collector and curator.

The exhibition MODE:BILDER is sponsored by the fashion label Luisa Cerano, which celebrated its 10th anniversary on 9 February 2007 with a charity photo auction. Other partners are Vogue and ERCO.