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Alfred Wertheimer
Alfred Wertheimer

Alfred Wertheimer

Country: United States
Birth: 1929 | Death: 2014

Alfred Wertheimer was an American photographer best known for his intimate and iconic images of Elvis Presley during his early career. His photographs provide a rare and intimate look into the life of one of music's most influential figures.

Wertheimer was hired by RCA Victor Records in 1956, at the age of 26, to document the rising star Elvis Presley. Wertheimer followed Presley on tour for several months, capturing candid moments both on and off stage. His photographs revealed the young musician's raw and unguarded side, highlighting his charisma, vulnerability, and undeniable talent.

Wertheimer's photographs of Elvis Presley have come to represent the spirit and energy of early rock and roll. Wertheimer's lens captured the essence of Elvis' cultural phenomenon, from backstage encounters to private moments at home.

The most famous photograph in Wertheimer's collection is arguably "The Kiss." The photograph, taken during a train ride in 1956, captures a tender moment between Elvis and a young woman through a train window. This image has come to represent Elvis Presley's allure and magnetism as a cultural icon.

Wertheimer's work extended beyond his time with Elvis throughout his career. He shot a diverse range of subjects, including well-known musicians, politicians, and cultural figures. His photographs have been shown in galleries all over the world, have been published in numerous books, and are still admired for their artistic and historical significance.

The photographs of Elvis Presley by Alfred Wertheimer have left an indelible mark on the worlds of music and photography. He captured the essence of a young musician on the verge of stardom through his lens, providing a glimpse into the humanity behind the legend. Wertheimer's photographs are as powerful and captivating today as they were when they were first captured, capturing the spirit of a cultural icon and the energy of a transformative era.

 

Alfred Wertheimer's Video

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Patrick Wack
France
1979
Patrick Wack was born in Cannes in 1979 and grew up in the Paris suburbs. A former top sportsman, he has a degree in foreign languages and a diploma from the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris. His studies took him to the United States, Sweden and Germany. A self-taught photographer, he left Berlin in 2006 for China with the ambition of documenting its emergence, and the hope of living a life off the beaten track. He was based in Shanghai for eleven years as a freelance photographer alternating between commissions for the international press and institutional clients. He also worked on long-term documentary projects on themes important to the understanding of our times. These include urban change and forced modernisation in China, the Tibetan question, inter-ethnic tensions in the Balkans and the 'pioneering front' of the New Silk Road in its aesthetic, social and political dimensions. After eleven years in China, he now divides his time between Europe, China and Russia. His reports have been published in Time magazine, The Sunday Times, Géo, The British Journal of Photography and Courrier International, among others. He is one of the co-founders of the photographic cooperative Inland. DUST Dust, a monographic book by photographer Patrick Wack on the Uyghur communities. The monograph DUST gathers four years of work by French photographer Patrick Wack shot in the areas of Central Asia known as East Turkistan or Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region under the current Chinese administration. In recent years, the region has been at the centre of an international outcry following the mass-incarceration of its Uyghur population and other Muslim minorities. This body of work captures a visual narrative of the region and is a testimony to its abrupt descent into an Orwellian dystopia. In 2016 and 2017, Wack spent more than two months in Xinjiang photographing Out West, his first long-term project about the region. He decided to return in 2018, upon reading reports of the mass arbitrary detention system being set up there. In 2019, he travelled to Xinjiang on two separate occasions for another project, The Night Is Thick. This second reportage aimed at documenting life under acute repression among the Uyghur minority alongside the disturbing simultaneous increase of Han-Chinese tourism in the region. These images have been widely published and exhibited over the past four years, illustrating the situation in the region, and have received numerous accolades. Recent events in Xinjiang are now considered some of the most severe crimes against humanity currently unfolding in the world and this project is possibly the most complete photographic documentation of the region in recent years. Find out more about DUST
Ian van Coller
South Africa
1970
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Marco Panzetti
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Guido Klumpe
Germany
1971
Guido Klumpe was born in 1971 in Germany. He's been taking photographs since he was sixteen years old. After graduating from high school, he traveled through Southeast Asia. From then on he was infected by street photography, without knowing that this genre even existed. He discovered the magic of the decisive moment. After his studies in social work, other art forms became interesting for him. He danced and acted in theatre. But in 2016 he rediscovered his passion for street photography. Since then, there is not a day when he is not involved in (street) photography. He is almost blind since birth on the left and have 25% vision on the right because the optic nerves don't pass on as much information to the brain. You can imagine it like an internet video with a low data rate. Through photography he go to and beyond the limits of his vision. Guido Klumpe won several awards, among others at the Paris Street Photography award, the German Streetfotografie Festival and the Minimalist Photography award. His work has been published in various international online and print magazines. My work combines three genres that influence each other: street photography, minimal photography and abstract photography. I see my city as an urban landscape. A landscape made up of shapes, colors, reflections and light. I can dissolve and reassemble these elements, limited only by the laws of optics, the possibilities of the camera and my imagination. The overarching theme is the tension between urban architecture and its inhabitants. In my ongoing series 'Loosing one dimension' I playfully explore the fragile moment of transition where three-dimensional architecture dissolves and abstracts into the two-dimensional. When the viewer loses orientation and can't tell for sure what they see, which parts of the image are in front, and which are behind, they experience a bit of how I sometimes lose my bearings in the world. To achieve this effect, I photographically superimpose different parts of the building. I often find my motifs on arterial roads, industrial areas or suburbs.
Dan Budnik
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