When he exited Nazi Germany in 1933, the young German Jewish artist John Gutmann was determined to remake his life anew. Instead of aiming to resettle like the rest of his family in New York, he bought passage on a steamer headed via Panama to the farthest coast. In transit, he practiced photographing with his first camera, a modern Rolleiflex he bought while preparing to emigrate. As soon as he arrived in San Francisco, he began photographing in earnest all that seemed to signify cosmopolitan freedom in the city he hoped to call his home.

Residing in San Francisco until his death in 1998, Gutmann witnessed his adopted city become the capital of the 1960s counter-culture. But already in the 1930s, his vision of America was distinctly counter-cultural (and arguably this is one reason why his postwar San Francisco State art and photography students found him so congenial). In marked contrast to many European immigrants who found much to lament in the crude materialism of America, Gutmann’s photographs champion all signs of laissez faire liberty as the touchstones of innovation as well as individualism.

• 6:30 pm: My Eyes Were Fresh, a documentary about the life and work of John Gutmann
  
• 7:00 pm: Viewing of Gutmann exhibition and reception
  
• 7:30 pm: A Gulliver in America: John Gutmann’s “Awfully Fresh” Photographs from the 1930s (A talk and presentation by Sally Stein)

Read an article about the exhibit, and watch a slideshow of Gutmann's work here.