From The Power of Photography, published by ACC 2022

"There is only one country in the world to go to, the United States. There is only

one state, California, and there is only one city, San Francisco."

~John Gutmann

John Gutmann was born in Germany and was immersed in the cultural and artistic life of Berlin, where he studied painting under the great German expressionist painter Otto Müller. Gutmann moved to San Francisco when Hitler rose to power to escape fascism and start anew in America, like so many other gifted European artists. He took up photography as a way to earn a living and excelled at it.

Gutmann’s painting background influenced his photography. He understood innately shapes and points of view, light and dark, and blurred the lines between realism and his own particular style of surrealism. This image is a prime example of the perfect composition in photography where he captured the immensely gifted competitive springboard diver Marjorie Gestring, right at the moment when she was briefly suspended motionless in mid-air. The next year, at the age of 13, she

won a gold medal at the Berlin Summer Olympics; she was the youngest athlete ever to do so. John Gutmann went on to an illustrious career as a photographer and teacher.

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