Author Description

This exhibition catalogue focusses on the long and distinctive photographic career of John Gutmann, whose vision has been pervasive, yet he has remained by choice an elusive figure. Since 1933 he has worked outside the mainstream of 20th century American photography, taking no part in the prevailing conventions and esthetic debates in photographic practice. Gutmann has not been overtly concerned with the process of making art in photography., the art has been coincidental. Central to his perception as an image maker is that the medium provided an opportunity to view the world and to imagine it at the same time. His vision responded to subject content and materialized into particular thematic ideas that established an 'archive' of categories - Documents of the Street, Automobile Culture, The Depression, Foreign Cultures, Women, Death, Graffiti, Structured Vision, and an enigmatic category, Beyond Reality. Gutmann's attitude and methodology of working, and its underpinning, is discussed in the essay provided by Maia-Mari Sutnik, who organized the exhibition.