Turning to Look

John Gutmann

1935 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

This tiny image is a contact print from a negative exposed in a Rolleiflex camera. It portrays a fashion model whom the photographer dated in San Francisco. Neither fact explains the haunting effect of the image as well as Andre Breton's words (concerning Man Ray): "It needed the eye of a great hunter, the patience, the sense of the moment pathetically right when a balance, transient besides, occurred in the expression of a face, between dream and action."

Artist

John Gutmann

Date

1935

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987