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As the Rolling Stones finished Exile on Main St. in Los Angeles, they approached designer John Van Hamersveld and his photographer partner Norman Seeff, and also invited documentary photographer Robert Frank. The same day Seeff photographed the Stones at their Bel Air mansion, Frank took Jagger for photographs at Los Angeles' Main Street.
The location was the 500 block near the Leonide Hotel. At the time
there was a pawnshop, a shoeshine business and a pornographic theatre
(The Galway Theatre) at the location. Still, Van Hamersveld and Jagger
chose the cover image from an already existing Frank photograph, an
outtake from his seminal 1958 book The Americans. Named "Tattoo Parlor" but possibly taken from Hubert's Dime museum in New York City, the image is a collage of circus performers and freaks, such as "Three Ball Charlie", a 1930s sideshow performer from Humboldt, Nebraska who holds three balls (a tennis ball, a golf ball, and a "5" billiard ball) in his mouth;
Joe "The Human Corkscrew" Allen, pictured in a postcard-style
advertisement, a contortionist with the ability to wiggle and twist
through a 13.5-inch (34 cm) hoop;
and Hezekiah Trambles, "The Congo Jungle Freak", a man who dressed as
an African savage, in a picture taken by the then recently deceased Diane Arbus.
The Seeff pictures were repurposed as 12 perforated postcards inside
the sleeve, while Frank's Main Street photographs were used in the gatefold
and back cover collage made by Van Hamersveld, which features other
pictures Frank took of the band and their crew—including their assistant
Chris O'Dell, a former acquaintance of Van Hamersveld who brought him
to the Stones and other The Americans outtakes.
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