Elvis at 21

Feb. 19-May 15, Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine St., Doylestown, 215-340-9800, michenermuseum.org.

by Shaun Brady

[ visual art ]

When photographer Alfred Wertheimer set out on the road with a 21-year-old Elvis Presley, his subject was a popular singer but not yet an icon. It could be argued, in fact, that the images Wertheimer captured during the course of 1956 were partly responsible for cementing the proto-King's ascendancy. Candid snapshots of young celebrities today are a means of attack: Upskirts, endangered infants and substance-clouded stares are the coin of the realm. But the indelible portraits that Wertheimer created that year aren't gotcha shots but intimate encounters, recognizably human while still graven moments of history. Much of it was timing: Presley attained an unprecedented degree of celebrity in '56, so the photog was alongside him in his last unguarded moments, before his hangers-on closed ranks and his stardom eclipsed his reality. The Michener pairs Wertheimer's photos with a retrospective of another American icon, Muhammad Ali.

Feb. 19-May 15, Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine St., Doylestown, 215-340-9800, michenermuseum.org.