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In photos: Elvis on the brink of history
Alfred Wertheimer was there to capture behind the scenes during the ‘making of Elvis’
“Elvis who?” was photographer Alfred Wertheimer’s response when, in early 1956, a publicist asked him to photograph an up-and-coming crooner from Memphis. Little did Wertheimer know that this would be the job of his life: just 21 years old, Elvis Presley was – as we now know – about to become a legend.
Trailing Presley like a shadow, Wertheimer took nearly 3,000 photographs of the singer that year, a man poised on the brink of superstardom. Wertheimer’s Elvis project immortalised a young man in the very process of making history.
Elvis and the Birth of Rock and Roll collects Wertheimer’s most remarkable shots from that year, along with a selection of his historic 1958 pictures of the star being shipped off to an army base in Germany (Wertheimer’s home country).
His photographs, which first gained national attention after Elvis Presley died in 1977, capture the singer’s evolution in the music industry and cultural transformation of America.
You can purchase ‘Alfred Wertheimer. Elvis and the Birth of Rock and Roll’ here
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