Guzmán, Juan

Juan Guzmán (Hans Gutmann) was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1911 and died in Mexico City in 1982. He was a self-taught photographer influenced by the avant-garde, cinema, and European and American illustrated magazines of the first half of the 20th century. As a photographer, he joined the republican side at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. In the context of the war, Hans Gutmann changed his name to Juan Guzmán and, as one of the Spanish exiles, arrived in Mexico in July 1939. From 1940, he worked as a photographer for the newspaper Novedades and later for the illustrated magazines Así, Sucesos para todos, Hoy, Tiempo, and Mañana. His archive of over two hundred thousand negatives and prints, mostly housed by the Fundación Televisa, covers topics such as landscape, archaeology, architecture, festivities, and the social, political, and cultural life of Mexico. Starting in 1946, he published as a Mexican correspondent for Time and Life magazines. He also carried out commissions for public institutions and private companies, reproductions of works, and portraits of visual artists and public figures. In 1947, he participated in the exhibition "Palpitaciones de la vida nacional. México visto por los fotógrafos de prensa" (Palpitations of national life: Mexico seen by press photographers).