Alfred Wertheimer

In 1956, a twenty-one-year-old singer named Elvis Presley was at the beginning of his remarkable career. Alfred Wertheimer, a young New York photojournalist, was asked by Elvis's new label, RCA Victor, to photograph their new artist. In the course of his one-day assignment for RCA, Wertheimer was struck by the stunningly photogenic performer and felt compelled to continue documenting the everyday moments in Elvis's life during that crucial year. Wertheimer's unobtrusive photographs of Elvis in performance, with his fans, in the recording studio, and at home with his family present a unique look at one of the world's most famous cultural figures. These images were the first and the last unguarded look at Elvis, and also constitute an important visual document of post-World War II America. With hundreds of gorgeously reproduced high-quality prints, "Elvis "is the result of a special alchemy between an exceptionally talented photographer and a charismatic young man on the brink of superstardom.

"Elvis who?" was photographer Alfred Wertheimer's response when, in early 1956, an RCA Victor 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 Presley that year, creating a penetrating portrait of a man poised on the brink of superstardom. Extraordinary in its intimacy and unparalleled in its scope, Wertheimer's Elvis project immortalized a young man in the very process of making history. Elvis and the Birth of Rock and Roll collects Wertheimer's most remarkable Elvis shots from that magical year, along with a selection of his historic 1958 pictures of the star being shipped off to an army base in Germany. Each chapter is illustrated with a poster by Hatch Show Print, one of the oldest letterpress print shops in America, which created many early Elvis posters in the 1950s.