[1] Gutmann reinvented himself as a photographer before he left Germany, purchasing a Rolleiflex and signing a photojournalism contract with Presse-Photo in 1933.
[6] His work on other stories was later published in popular contemporary newsmagazines such as Time, Look, and The Saturday Evening Post.
I was seeing America with an outsider's eyes - the automobiles, the speed, the freedom, the graffiti ...He enjoyed taking photos of ordinary things and making them seem special.
[10] Kenneth Baker, art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote in 1997 that Gutmann was "an emissary of European modernism" who "brought a distinct angle of vision to the American scene" and his images demonstrated his "excitement of his witness to the [Depression-era] times".
[11] David Bonetti, art critic for the San Francisco Examiner, called Gutmann's output from the 1930s "his best–when, a young Jewish refugee, he experienced America as a bemused stranger in a strange land.
He saw its cars, its rites and festival, its athletes, its women, its vibrant African American communities and its dynamic street life with European eyes.
[13] In his obituary, SFGate remembered him as a "leading photojournalist of the Depression era, a painter and an art instructor at San Francisco State University.