II/X Lunch Hour, San Francisco

Technique

Gelatin silver print

Measurements

Measurements of printed area: 36,7 x 32,6 cm (14 7/16 x 12 13/16 in.)
Paper size: 43 x 35,6 cm (16 15/16 x 14 in.)

Inventory

FM000857

Subject / Document

Later copy 1981-1982

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.