This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/25/2024
Elvis Presley Special Edition Original Platinum Photograph – First Time Offering!
In honor of the 70th Anniversary of Elvis Presley’s first song release we are pleased to offer for the first time this Platinum Photograph printed from the original negative. The photograph is part of a group of three photographs that were taken by Opal Walker about 8 weeks after Elvis Presley’s first song was released in Memphis. It was the night that he first met Johnny Cash and his first wife Vivian as they had just moved to town. Elvis was playing for the opening of a drugstore in Memphis and performed on the back of a flatbed truck with his bandmates Scotty Moore and Bill Black. Opal Walker was a striking, confident 21-year-old living and working in Memphis. She was at the concert that night and took three photos. She lived in the bustling Russwood Park area about a mile from Sun Records and worked in downtown Memphis. She and her girlfriend went to Elvis Presley's church to meet him, and after the service they met and flirted with him, and she recalled he teased her about her long blonde hair.
This Special Edition Platinum Photograph is hand crafted from the original negative in Los Angeles at Weldon Color Lab by French fine art printer and photographer Laurent Girard. Laurent moved to New York and studied film and photography at the School of Visual Arts. He turned to other ways of making images yet again and concentrated on fine-art photography, which is when his true darkroom love affair really began. Laurent has been a master printer for over two decades now, his prints always bring the best to every negative. Laurent now resides in Los Angeles.
About Weldon Color Lab: John Weldon as the founder of Weldon Color Lab, in Los Angeles California, John Weldon has spent the last thirty years creating fine photographic prints for over 5,000 clients and 400 art shows worldwide. John has won high praise as a master print maker in the inner circles of contemporary art. His work has been displayed at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and many other prestigious museums and galleries across America.
Hand-Signed by the printer Laurent Girard and Estate Stamped by the Estate of Opal Walker and signed by the executor for the Estate of Opal Walker, Ken Walker.
Condition: Excellent.
Dimensions 14 x 14 printed on 16 x 20 paper.
In July of 1954, Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley split the musical atom releasing a cultural magnetic force field that still exists today known as rock and roll. Two months afterwards 19-year-old Elvis and his bandmates — 23-year-old Scotty Moore and 27-year-old Bill Black were mostly playing in and around Memphis. These photos taken in September of 1954 offer a glimpse of what the future king looked like. Nothing has been the same since. NOTHING.
Comes a letter of authenticity from the Opal Walker Estate and a Gotta Have Rock and Roll Certificate of Authenticity.
Please allow three weeks for printing and shipping.