Elvis: The Personal Archives

Book

ElvisNews review

This book is made by one (graphic) artist about one (musical and movie) artist. Is one plus one three?

Design

The book is a real glossy book on real glossy items (Elvis' belongings). A hardcover book with a well designed modern look showing “old stuff” (pre-1977). The foreword is written by renowned art historian, E.A. Carmean, Jr. It is a big book , dimensions: 12.3 x 8.9 x 0.7 inches.

Jeff Scott is known for his dramatic imagery of America’s historic and cultural landscape and his work is in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, Disneyland, Ralph Lauren, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Content

Over the past years EPE cooperated with a number of writers and artists on book publications. Most of these publications have a few things in common. Usually the books are big coffee table books (with Joe Piazza’s “The King” almost being a coffee table on its own) with very little text and a lot of pictures of personal belongings of Elvis.

Presenting numerous personal belongings the artist gives us a view in a more personal side of Elvis. What did he buy, what was his taste? Most items fit the taste of the King (of “Bling”) and all items may have a story of their own, partly because they once belonged to Elvis.

This book partly takes a different direction due to the crafmanship of Jeff Scott. Being a graphic artist he created visual artworks of Elvis’ belongings. Some of those featured in the book were already published before by Jeff Scott, but in this book you find them all and new ones.

Jeff summarizes it perfectly in the introduction:” my goal was to use the tactile connection of Elvis’ personal artifacts and relate them to our own sense of identity – a subtle way to strip down the image of celebrity and to humanize Elvis”

In his work “Object of Authority” the pairing of the narcotics badge Elvis received from President Nixon with one of Elvis guns shows the paradox of Elvis’ rebellion and his obsession with authoritative symbols. This shows who and what Elvis was behind closed doors. The result: an interesting view on the entertainer who became larger than life with a gold bedside telephone to show it.

This book contains many personal items and items with a “touch of Jeff Scott” making it more interesting than the other books which mainly show “plain” Elvis artifacts.

Conclusion

A very nice “art” book on the person Elvis Presley.