A new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery chronicles a little-known period in the life of Elvis Presley.
In 1956 photographer Alfred Wertheimer was hired to shoot promotional images of a recently signed, 21-year-old recording artist, Elvis Presley. Accompanying Presley on the road, at concerts, in the studio and at home, the freelance photojournalist documented Presley’s meteoric rise in the year he shot from anonymity to superstardom. Wertheimer’s images are now the subject of a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer.
The exhibition, which opens 7 December and closes 10 March 2014, presents 56 striking images of Presley in a rare period before he became an icon and before security and money built walls between the performer and his fans.
Wertheimer was in the New York City recording studio on the day Elvis recorded ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ and ‘Hound Dog’. He also joined Elvis after the recording session as he travelled home to Memphis by train. One image shows Elvis as just part of the crowd surrounding a lunch vendor on a train platform during a brief stop on the 27-hour trip. This anonymity was short-lived. The photographs of a concert on his return to Memphis show a young man who now had to have a police escort to get through the crowd of fans between his car and the stadium.
‘Henri Cartier-Bresson was known for photographing the decisive moment, that moment when everything falls into place,’ said Wertheimer. ‘But I was more interested in the moments just before or just after the decisive moment.’
Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer is on at the National Portrait Gallery from 7 December 2013 to 10 March 2014.
With high school sweetheart, Barbara. 1034 Audubon Drive, Memphis, Tenn. July 4, 1956, by Alfred Wertheimer © Alfred Wertheimer. All rights reserved.
Reading fan letters, New York City. March, 17, 1956, by Alfred Wertheimer © Alfred Wertheimer. All rights reserved.
On train, New York to Memphis, July 4, 1956, by Alfred Wertheimer © Alfred Wertheimer. All rights reserved. 
Onstage, The Mosque, Richmond, Mosque Theater, Richmond, Va., June 30, 1956, by Alfred Wertheimer © Alfred Wertheimer. All rights reserved.
Backstage, The Mosque, Richmond, Va. June 30, 1956, by Alfred Wertheimer © Alfred Wertheimer. All rights reserved.