‘Graceland’ Photographs: Worshiping to Icon of Elvis

In the ancient world, art, sex and religion were intertwined. By the time Elvis Presley came to fame in the 1950s, sex and religion were not even mentioned in polite conversation, much less equated. Elvis’ early success came, if you like, from injecting art back into a bland pop music and making it vitally sexy.

The cult that grew up around Presley’s memory after he died in 1977 has some of the flavor of an evangelical religion. Centered on his Memphis estate, Graceland, it attracts thousands of votaries making pilgrimages to grieve and buy kitsch mementos of the King.

All that is subject and subtext of “How Great Thou Art: Photographs From Graceland,” a traveling exhibition of about 60 images making its national debut at UC Riverside’s California Museum of Photography. The visual essay’s author is photographer Ralph Burns. He has spent parts of the last 17 years documenting the Elvis phenomenon, which hovers somewhere between the pathetic and the grotesque, broadcasting reverberations that have a lot to say about how truly and deliciously weird American culture can be.

There is curiously little to be said about Burns’ photographs as photographs. They’re pretty clean in composition, nicely printed; they carry a combined flavor of the styles of Robert Frank and Diane Arbus. The Frank part comes from Burns’ shared deadpan street-photographer’s detachment.

Some images suggest the use of a wide-angle lens with its built-in capacity for caricature, but these pictures show little desire to be interpretive. The Arbus part comes from Burns’ fascination with people willing, even proud, to broadcast their individuality, even if that makes some snob jerk see them as eccentrics or freaks. They are the source of the dispirited energy in these pictures.

There is hardly an image on view without some Elvis icon in it: A middle-aged guy trudges along with a half-life-size doll of the great rocker in his decadent-period white satin Vegas Elvis duds.

Strangely enough, the pictures suggest his fans actually prefer him as a puffy, fat caricature of himself, after he had become a martyr to his own celebrity. They dress their pre-pubescent sons in that outfit, not the leather jacket of the early years.

A barker-type hawks marriage certificates with the King’s picture engraved on them, evidently for people who’d like to be his imaginary spouse. Souvenir-stand plasters range from reverence to spoofs of his devastating sneer.

But these are second-hand specters that pale against the enigma of the fans. The oddest thing about them is that they don’t seem to know exactly what they’re doing. They certainly don’t seem to be paying homage to Presley’s superb voice or the way he made black music viable for a white audience. There are Asians among the pilgrims, but I didn’t see any blacks. No one seems to be celebrating sex, which was certainly the strongest of Presley’s charismatic attributes.

Numerous posted statements of devotion from the fans include only one that even hints at sexual admiration. Shirley Perry from Dallas talks about the pallor of ‘50s crooners like Perry Como and enthuses that Elvis “gave us freedom.”

There is really only one sexually charged image, and it’s poignantly bizarre. An obese woman sits in a chair, smoking, staring admiringly at an Elvis mannequin lying on the bed covered with a blanket.

For the rest, the Dionysian Elvis seems to have been sanitized into a harmless Sunday-school saint with no more libido than a lamb. Statements say that fans “feel better” when they listen to an Elvis record.

Pictures show women weeping at his flower-bedecked grave, but no one--his impersonators least of all--seems to remember what the guy was all about. They seem to appreciate him less for the powerful rebel he was and more for the celebrity he became, anxious to do his duty even if it killed him.

* UC Riverside, California Museum of Photography, 3824 Main St., through Aug. 18. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Information: (909) 784-3020.