John Gutmann

John Gutmann (born May 28, 1905 in Breslau ; † June 12, 1998 in San Francisco , California ) was an American photographer of German origin. Most famous are his photographs from the 1930s, which document urban life during the Great Depression , but differ from the social documentary photography of the time.

Life

Gutmann came from a well-to-do Jewish family from Breslau, where he was introduced to the arts at an early age. He received training as a painter at the State Academy for Arts and Crafts in Breslau , where the expressionist Otto Mueller was his teacher. After completing his first degree in 1927, he first studied philosophy and art history at the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelms University and then went to Berlin, where he continued and completed his training at the Friedrich Wilhelms University and the Prussian Academy of the Arts , among others .

He had just begun to make a name as a painter when he after the takeover by the Nazis lost in 1933 as a Jew his job as a teacher and decided to emigrate to the United States. A friend advised him to settle in San Francisco. Since Gutmann was unsure whether he would be able to stay afloat as a painter in the USA, he decided to become a press photographer. He bought a Rolleiflex camera, taught himself to take photos as an autodidact and entered into a contractual agreement with the Berlin press agency “Foto-Presse” to work for them in the USA. He then went on the sea voyage to San Francisco, where he arrived in late 1933.

In the 1930s he mainly worked as a press photographer for magazines - until 1936 for “Foto-Presse” - without seeing himself as an artist. His photos from this period document both, through the careful composition, unusual perspectives and unusual motifs, his academic training and the gaze of the outsider, who is both fascinated and alienated by American society and culture. The work differs from the social documentary photography of the time, which was funded through the Farm Security Administration by the New Deal government programs.

As far as Gutmann chose people as subjects, the photos do not show victims of poverty and misery, but people who participate in social life and are out for fun even in times of the Great Depression, including many young women and representatives of ethnic minorities. Gutmann also showed particular interest in everything that had to do with road traffic. Frequent motifs were therefore cars and traffic signs. He also repeatedly photographed graffiti .

In 1937 Gutmann undertook a trip through the United States on behalf of the New York photo agency "Pix Inc." and documented the Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the car culture in Chicago , among other things . In 1938 the first solo exhibition of his works took place at the MH de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco under the title “Colorful America” . Since 1938 he taught painting, drawing and art history at San Francisco State College . During World War II he worked for the US Army Signal Corps and the Office of War Information . He captured the war in Southeast Asia both as a photographer and as a cameraman. In 1947 he exhibited his work from this period, again in the Young Memorial Museum.

After the war he resumed teaching and stayed at San Francisco State College until he retired in 1973. In 1946 he initiated a course in Creative Photography, which was one of the first academic programs of its kind in the USA. He founded a film screening series entitled "Art Movies", in which documentary, experimental and historical short films were shown. Gutmann worked again for the agency "Pix Inc." and his photos appeared for many years in Look , Time , Life and in other American and international magazines.

His photographic work from the 1930s was little known during this period. It was only after resigning from teaching in 1974 that he succeeded in arranging an exhibition of a hundred photos from this period in a New York gallery. This led to a rediscovery of his work and a follow-up exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art under the title “As I Saw It” in 1976. Since then his works have been shown repeatedly in solo and collective exhibitions in the USA and Europe.

Gutmann continued to take photos even when he was over eighty. The Signals photo series dates back to 1987 , with which he demonstrated his continuing interest in signs and graffiti. The photos show letters, numbers and word fragments taken against a black background.

Since 1949 John Gutmann was married to the painter Gerrie von Pribosic; the two had no children. He died in San Francisco in June 1998 at the age of 93.

Exhibitions

• 1938: Colorful America. San Francisco, MH de Young Memorial Museum .
• 1947: The Face of the Orient. San Francisco, MH de Youn Memorial Museum.
• 1974: New York, Light Gallery.
• 1976: As I Saw It.San Francscio, Museum of Modern Art .
• 1985: Fotografias 1934–39. Valencia , Il Jornades Fotografiques.
• 1988: Talking Pictures. Signs, tattoos & graffiti. San Francisco, Fraenkel gallery.
• 1989: John Gutmann. Beyond the Document. San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art.
• 1997: John Gutmann. Parallels in Focus. San Francisco, State University Art Department Gallery .
• 2000-2001: The Photographs of John Gutmann. Stanford, Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center at Stanford University in Palo Alto (also as a traveling exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art , Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, San Antonio; Henry Art Gallery of the University of Washington , Seattle ; Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center of Vassar College , Poughkeepsie ).

Photo books

• The Restless Decade. John Gutmann's Photographs of the Thirties. Text: Max Kozloff. Abrams, New York 1984, ISBN 0-81091-658-4 .
• The Photography of John Gutmann. Culture Shock. Text: Sandra Philipps. Merrell, New York 2000, ISBN 1-85894-097-4 (catalog for the traveling exhibition of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center at Stanford University, California, 2000-2001).
• John Gutmann. The Photographer at Work. Text: Sally Stein. Center of Creative Photography, Tucson u. a. 2009, (Catalog for the exhibition at the Center of Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, October 23, 2009– January 31, 2010).

literature

• Margarett Loke: John Gutmann, 93, Painter Who Became a Photographer. Obituary. In: New York Times . June 17, 1998.
• Darwin Marable: John Gutmann. In: Lynne Warren (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography. Routledge, New York 2006, Vol. 2, ISBN 0-41597-666-9 , pp. 645-648.