Elvis at 21, New York to Memphis:
Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer
Organized in conjunction with Govinda Gallery, Washington, D.C.
October 10, 2009–January 9, 2010
Bill L. Harbert Gallery
Dateline 1956: Norma Jean Mortenson adopts the name Marilyn Monroe; My Fair Lady opens on Broadway; actress Grace Kelly marries Rainier III, Prince of Monaco; General Electric introduces the first “snooze” alarm clock; the first transatlantic telephone cable goes operational; Tunisia gains independence from France; two airliners collide over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 aboard; incumbent US president Dwight D. Eisenhower wins re-election; the Huntley-Brinkley Report debuts on NBC-TV; Jackson Pollock dies in a car crash at 44; and Elvis Presley appears on the American music charts for the first time with Heartbreak Hotel.
Before Elvis, there was nothing.
– John Lennon
“Alfred Wertheimer’s photographs of Elvis Presley are a national treasure,” proclaims music historian Chris Murray in the introduction to the book Elvis at 21, New York to Memphis (Insight Editions: San Rafael, CA, 2006) that accompanies this fall’s featured exhibition. “Taken in 1956, Wertheimer’s photographs document Elvis Presley at the quintessential moment of his explosive appearance onto the cultural landscape.” Assigned by Elvis’s record label, RCA Victor, for a one-day photo shoot, Wertheimer was so struck by the rising young star’s charisma and photogenic persona, that he felt compelled to continue documenting the everyday moments in Elvis’s life during that transformative year.
This stunning exhibition of more than forty gelatin-silver photographs at JCSM precedes a planned national tour of Wertheimer’s images reproduced as pigment prints, organized by the Smithsonian Institution, and offers our audiences a rare opportunity to view the works in their original format. With almost cinematic luminosity, Wertheimer’s rich black-and-white photographs capture the future legend in rehearsal and performance, reading fan mail, visiting with a high school sweetheart, sitting alone in a diner, and riding the rails on a trip back home. The poignant images portray an innocent period in Presley’s life soon to vanish in the wake of his superstardom, and constitute an important visual document of post-World War II America.
Alfred Wertheimer, photographer
A graduate of Cooper Union School of Art, Alfred Wertheimer (American, born in Germany, 1929) began his career as a photojournalist in the early 1950s, producing work for Colliers, Life, Look, and Paris Match. He covered the 1960 presidential campaigns of John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Other subjects of his photography include Leonard Bernstein, Annette Funicello, the Hassidic Jews of Brooklyn, Eleanor Roosevelt, Nina Simone and Elizabeth Taylor. Wertheimer also worked as one of the principal cinematographers for the documentary film Woodstock.
Dateline 1956: Norma Jean Mortenson adopts the name Marilyn Monroe; My Fair Lady opens on Broadway; actress Grace Kelly marries Rainier III, Prince of Monaco; General Electric introduces the first “snooze” alarm clock; the first transatlantic telephone cable goes operational; Tunisia gains independence from France; two airliners collide over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 aboard; incumbent US president Dwight D. Eisenhower wins re-election; the Huntley-Brinkley Report debuts on NBC-TV; Jackson Pollock dies in a car crash at 44; and Elvis Presley appears on the American music charts for the first time with Heartbreak Hotel.
Alfred Wertheimer, photographer