"As a rule I do not like to explain my photographs, I want my pictures to be read and explored. I believe a good picture is open to many individual (subjective) associations. I am usually pleased when a viewer finds interpretations that I myself had not been aware of."
~ John Gutmann
(1905-1998)
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 Muller. He moved to San Francisco when Hitler rose to power to escape facism 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.His 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 years old, she won the gold medal at the Berlin Summer Olympics. The youngest athlete ever to do so and John went on to an illustrious career as a photographer and teacher.