Sarah and I took time this week to visit the Elvis at 21 photographic exhibit at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester. The 56 photos on display were taken in June and July of 1956 by Al Wertheimer who had been hired by RCA records to take some shots of this guy whose contract they had just purchased for the phenomenal sum of $40,000. The images are phenomenal, haunting really for a variety of reasons.
There's the shot of a long lunch counter in a Richmond hotel. Grilled cheese sandwiches were $.20, ham and cheese were $.40. At the far end of the counter is a young man flirting with a girl. No one else but the counter man is present. The young man, of course, is Elvis.
Sarah's favorite was of Elvis back at his parent's home in Memphis. Shirtless and in his stocking feet, Elvis is sitting in an overstuffed chair playing the records that he has just cut for his former high school sweetheart. She's wearing a white polka-dotted dress and is leaning toward Elvis from another chair, the record player in between them. It is highly symbolic, for the music would come between Elvis and Normalcy within weeks and this separation would last for the rest of his life. Normal would never be the same for the rest of us, either.
My favorite photo was actually a sequence of five shots of Elvis getting off the train at a Memphis suburb that was closer to his home than the downtown station. He exits the train, a solitary figure, bounding across a grassy lot. He stops to ask directions in the third shot. In the fifth photo he is waving to the train, as he walks towards his destination. If he only knew at that moment . . . and that's what makes these images so haunting. We know.
There was Elvis at a segregated lunch counter, in rehearsal rooms with no air-conditioning, riding a train. We know what happened to all of it.
I've always been fascinated by the moments right before the big moment. It's not December 7th, 1941 that haunts us, for example; it's December 6th, 1941. It was the last day of national innocence and that's the day we would go back to, that's the day in whose simple details and rhythms we would immerse ourselves. We've all had days such as those December of 1941 days in our personal lives. One day our life was one way and the next, it had changed course forever. Elvis at 21 shows us the last innocent days of an American legend.
Elvis fans, photographers, and history buffs should take time to see the photos of Al Wertheimer. So should people who can spot and appreciate ghosts.
For more information visit the museum's website.
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