John Gutmann: The Photographer at Work

John Gutmann (1905–1998) captured images of American culture, celebrating signs of a vibrant democracy, however imperfect. German born and trained as an artist and art teacher, he fled the Nazis in 1933 for San Francisco, reinventing himself as a photo-reporter. His outsider status—a Jew in Germany, an immigrant in the United States—informed his focus on multiculturalism. This exhibition draws on the Center for Creative Photography’s archive of Gutmann’s photographs and papers to present both unfamiliar works and little-known contexts for his imagery, linking his photography to his passion for painting and filmmaking, his collections of non-Western art and artifacts, and his devotion to teaching.