End of lonely street

“Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer,’’ which runs at the National Portrait Gallery through Jan. 23, consists of 56 black-and-white pictures. Wertheimer was on assignment for RCA, taking candids of a young regional singer the record label had recently signed. “Henri Cartier-Bresson was known for photographing the decisive moment,’’ Wertheimer has said. “I was more interested in the moments just before or just after the decisive moment.’’ Elvis was just a kid, barely old enough to vote or drink — old enough to change the world, though. He was also old enough to know he had nothing to fear from a photographer, or at least he wouldn’t for another two decades. “He permitted closeness,’’ Wertheimer says. Of course he did. The camera didn’t just love Elvis. It worshiped him.

This was an age that had a very different conception of celebrity, and Elvis’s own celebrity remained (relatively) manageable. So the closeness he permitted can seem startlingly intimate. We see him unlocking his hotel room door. He lies on a couch, a pile of fan mail for a pillow (check out those socks he’s wearing). He greets fans at a CBS stage door. He sits scowling in the back seat of a car in Richmond — the fierce, hooded eyes could be George Wallace’s. There are also more predictable, but no less riveting, images: performing on television and in concert; sitting on a Harley-Davidson, striking a Brando pose straight out of “The Wild One’’; at a recording session for “Hound Dog’’ and “Don’t Be Cruel.’’

Several of these pictures are very well known. The one of Elvis sitting at a piano in an empty rehearsal hall is the cover image for Peter Guralnick’s “Last Train to Memphis.’’ “The Kiss,’’ which shows Elvis and a lady friend acting tongue-tied (so to speak), is notorious. But familiarity does not rule out revelation, especially when presented as part of a larger whole. “The Kiss,’’ for example, concludes a five-photo sequence. It’s a treat getting to see Wertheimer’s work together, and much of it so big.