ShopElvis.com • Books • Elvis: The Personal Archives Book

Beginning in 2000, with the cooperation of the Elvis Presley estate, artist Jeff Scott gained unlimited access to Elvis's personal artifacts to create a complex portrait of the music legend through his belongings.

Scott's images reveal the humanity of Elvis behind the recognizable celebrity veneer. Elvis's driver's license, at once a banal Tennessee document and a charged remainder of the celebrity idol, raises large questions of identity. The way Scott juxtaposes the Elvis's gun collection and vanity police badges reveals a fundamental rift between Presley's rebellious reputation and his private obsession with the police and authority. The gold bedside telephone, the TV with a bullet hole though the screen and the travel trunk filled with scarves still in their dry cleaning plastic provides a rare portrayal of Elvis's inner life, placing the public man in an intimate context.

Throughout, Scott explores our complex relationship with modern celebrity culture and the ways in which our possessions and material objects outlive us to tell our story.

Printed in the USA