Gutman, John - The Photography of John Gutmann: Culture Shock (New in plastic!)

A compilation of photographs taken by John Gutmann captures the social turbulence in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. This was published for a series of exhibitions organized by Joel Leivick & Bernard Barryte between January 2000 to May 2001 at 4 American sites. The photographs in this book trace Gutmann's career from Germany where he trained in Expressionism, through his resolution to leave during Hitlers ascent to power, and his decision to settle in America where he would live most of his life. 

The hundred images illustrated in The Photography of John Gutmann: Culture Shock were chosen by Gutmann himself shortly before his death at the age of 93 to represent his work. Stanford's Center for Visual Arts has organized them into an exhibition for which this book is the well-produced catalog, besides being the definitive study of Gutmann to date.

In 1933, as America adjusted to the Great Depression, the young artist John Gutmann (1905 – June 12, 1998) left Berlin and settled in San Francisco. With an émigré's clear vision, he photographed an energetic society on the move. Automobiles, for example, are a constant motif: Gutmann was amazed at their ubiquity in consumerist America compared to Europe, where they were still owned only by the privileged. Gutmann's idiosyncratic portraits and vignettes of street life captured the vitality of urban America and delivered a strong social message. His directness is the antithesis of the lyricism of his California contemporaries Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, whose work he found self-conscious and annoying.

Publisher: Merrell Pub Ltd, 1st edition, 2000
Language: English
Hardcover: 144 pages
ISBN-10: 1858940974
ISBN-13: 9781858940977
Item weight: 1087 g
Dimensions: 24 x 1,3 x 29 cm

(New in plastic!)