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Elvis, Ali photos tell stories of two American icons

In a culture saturated with celebrity magazines, paparazzi and red carpets, it’s hard to imagine capturing an image of a young Elvis Presley alone on the sidewalk in New York. Or a picture of Muhammad Ali at play with neighborhood kids in a parking lot.
No screaming fans, no camera flashes, no entourages.
These unguarded moments are among dozens featured in ”Ali and Elvis: American Icons,” a pair of photography exhibits sharing gallery space through May 15 at the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania
, about 25 miles (40 kilometres) north of Philadelphia. This is the first time the exhibits have been displayed together.
The Smithsonian-curated ”Elvis at 21” show offers a glimpse into Presley’s life just as his star begins to rise. Needing publicity photos, Presley’s record company hired photographer Alfred Wertheimer in 1956 to shadow the rock-n-roll prince who would become The King.
Wertheimer had extraordinary access, said Smithsonian project director Marquette Folley.
”After this year, 1956, no one can ever get this close again,” Folley said. ”The walls go up.”
The images of Ali, taken by multiple photographers, chronicle his years from teen boxer to his reign as The Greatest to a beloved figure battling Parkinson’s disease. They were first displayed at a Hofstra University symposium on Ali in 2008.
Putting the exhibits together was simply an effort to take a broader look at the concepts of fame and the making of icons, said Brian Peterson, chief curator at the Michener Museum.
Certainly the two superstars had similarities. Both sons of the South, Presley and Ali enjoyed worldwide popularity but also alarmed some people with their swagger and attitude – Elvis with his thrusting pelvis and use of African-American rhythms in his music, Ali with his braggadocio and conversion to Islam.
Wertheimer’s 56 images – most enlarged to 3-by-4-foot (91-by-120-centimeter) prints – capture Presley’s electrifying stage persona but also his more intimate moments: standing in solitude in front of New York’s Warwick Hotel; sprawling on a couch reading fan mail; and interacting with his family.
Wertheimer also chronicles one summer week that found the American idol rehearsing alone at a piano for an appearance on Steve Allen’s show in New York, kissing a giddy fan backstage in Richmond, Virginia, and splashing in his swimming pool at home in Memphis, Tennessee.
”I was basically putting Elvis under my microscope,” Wertheimer, now 81, told The Associated Press. ”He permitted closeness.”

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