The ArtCenter Archives recently added the photographs of Irene Gutterman (PHOT 1937) to our online catalog. Working as the school photographer to help pay tuition, Gutterman documented Art Center’s faculty, students, student work, and classes across all academic departments. Her collection contains some of the earliest photographs we have in our College Archives, especially of our first campus on Seventh Street in Los Angeles. A number of her images appeared in the 1937 catalog.

The Irene Vermeers Collection consists almost entirely of photographs of Art Center School in the mid-1930s, especially faculty portraits and student work. Some of her images were less formal and capture rare candid images of students. The bulk of the collection is photographs of an Industrial Design Department class project from the mid-1930s taught by Kem Weber, whose objective was to design and build a model for a future Art Center campus to be located on Wilshire Boulevard.

In the early 2000s, she donated over 200 of her original prints and negatives to Art Center. In addition, she donated her original camera and tripod that she used as a student. A special thanks to Stan Vermeers, Irene’s son, for his additional donations of her photographs and ArtCenter Photography faculty Al King's color theory notebooks.

Image caption: Three students wearing smocks in the courtyard, circa 1936 [2008.3.14]. Copyright ArtCenter College of Design