Memory © 1999 Arizona Board of Regents, Centre for Creative Photography. © COLECCIONES Fundación MAPFRE

John Gutmann
Memory, 1939
© 1999 Arizona Board of Regents, Centre for Creative Photography, 2021
© Fundación MAPFRE COLLECTIONS

Author

John Gutmann

Born:
Breslau, Germany, 1905

Died:
San Francisco, California, EE.UU., 1998

Entry date: 2010

Origin: Courtesy of the Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Technique

Gelatin silver print

Measurements

Measurements of printed area: 31,9 x 26,3 cm (12 9/16 x 10 3/8 in.)
Paper size: 35,3 x 27,9 cm (13 7/8 x 11 in.)

Inventory

FM000848

Subject / Document

Later copy

Description

John Gutmann arrived in the United States to escape from a country which was becoming increasingly oppressive. He found the freedom, the spontaneity and the sensuality of the American streets, where everything was in flux, to be the ideal backdrop for reinventing himself as a photographer. The most mundane and difficult to categorize scenes and details had a novel character for him. Just like Evans, Gutmann demonstrated an extraordinary sensitivity for popular culture, which he described and analyzed without identifying himself with it. His gaze is that of the foreigner who has escaped from the stigma of being different and is fascinated by the extravagance of American life and of their freedom and the racial mix of the major cities.

The portraits he took of the Mardi Gras carnival in New Orleans in 1937 are a clear example of this fascination for mobility and the boldness of American society. These photographs comprise a study on social upheaval and tolerated transgression, when the entire black population take over the streets with a riotous carnival spirit. Gutmann’s genius can above all be appreciated in how he frames the image, how he crafts the content of a disjointed and highly animated world such as a circus, where he photographs the appealing and tranquil sensuality of the Americans: dreamers, entertainers, dancers, singers, swimmers or tightrope walkers. A fertile landscape for the surreal appreciation of chance encounters.

Many of these first photographs were destined for publication in the press, but far from being superficial images, we find an insistent, reflexive and piercing gaze, less interested in the anecdotal than the life that surrounded him. And he shares this reflection: “I am usually pleased when a viewer finds interpretations that I myself had not been aware of, the best images have this ambiguity, which is the essence of life. In this sense I am not interested in trying desperately to make Art, but I am interested in relating to the marvellous extravagance of life” (John Gutmann. Madrid, 2010. page, 53).

His portraits of women are complex; an erotic tension is always present in the portraits and nudes, far removed from the simplistic sensuality of the popular magazines. For Gutmann, rather than merely subject matters, they were collaborators on his work. He found energy and resourcefulness in their eyes, in the same way that through the camera’s lens he learned how photography could explain the history of a nation or a man’s own story.

Signed on the reverse in pencil
United States

DUPUY, Alain. John Gutmann: 1934-1939, (cat.exp.). Valencia: II Jornades Fotografiques a Valencia, 1985.
99 Fotografias: John Gutmann, América 1934-1954, (cat.exp.). Barcelona: Fundacio Caixa de Pensions, 1989.
John Gutmann, 99 Fotografies, América, 1934-1954.  (cat.exp.). Sevilla: Fundación Luis Cernuda,  Diputación de Sevilla, 1990.
HUMPHREY, John. as i saw it: Photographs by John Gutmann. (cat.exp.). San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1976.
KOZLOFF, Max. The Restless Decade: John Gutmann’s Photographs of the Thirties. Edición Lew Thomas. Nueva York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1984.
PHILLIPS, Sandra S. The  Photography of John Gutmann: Culture Shock. (cat.exp.). Edición Bernard Barryte y Julian Honer. Londres: Merrell Publishers Limited y  the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, California, 2000.
John Gutmann: Beyond the Document. (cat.exp.). San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1989.
SUTNIK, Maia-Mari. Gutmann. (cat.exp.). Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1985.
WALTERS, Sylvia Solochek y Mark Johnson. John Gutmann: Parallels in Focus. featuring the original “Talking Pictures”. (cat.exp.). San Francisco State University Art Department Gallery, 1997.

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