Lots of attitude, energy at this ‘Rock’ show

There are also pictures from photographers important within the genre of rock photography: Alfred Wertheimer, who took so many terrific early shots of Elvis; Astrid Kirch-herr, who photographed the Beatles in their German days; Baron Wolman, Rolling Stone’s first staff photographer (“I felt as though I was a conduit for this experience,’’ he said of shooting concerts); and Annie Leibovitz, Wolman’s successor as well as the missing link between rock photography and celebrity photography. Linking them didn’t take much of an effort: Both document the striking of poses.

Leibovitz has said that her interest was in recording “how music lived, not how music is made.’’ That was a shrewd insight. From the beginning, rock was as much about stance and attitude as sound. One reason Elvis be came Elvis, even though Bill Haley preceded him atop the charts as a white musician who had absorbed black music and reimagined it, was that Elvis looked like Elvis and Bill Haley looked like . . . Bill Haley. If you doubt that such things matter, observe Jean-Pierre Leloir’s 1966 photograph of Haley performing in Paris. The man may be holding a guitar, which is to the iconography of rock stars what riding a horse is to that of cowboys, but what Haley resembles is a shop teacher eager for early retirement.

From the beginning, marketing was part of the music. It’s the commercial equivalent of striking a pose. (Never forget that Brian Epstein, not Murray the K or George Martin, was the real fifth Beatle.) One of the first images in the exhibit chronologically shows the marquee of a Brooklyn theater announcing Alan Freed’s rock ’n’ roll show. Shot at night, it’s aglow with urban glamour, but there’s nothing especially rock ’n’ roll about that; it’s standard showbiz. William “PoPsie’’ Randolph took the picture. Contrast that with the other Randolph picture here, which shows Wilson Pickett (looking uncannily like Eddie Murphy) performing at a New York club in 1966. There’s a jolt to the scene that leaves showbiz way behind. Even better is the look of delight on the face of Pickett’s guitarist — nothing feigned or showbiz phony about that. The guitarist’s name? Jimi Hendrix.

The best pictures here are, almost with exception, simple, clean, direct. The photography doesn’t get in the way of the personality of either music or musician. That doesn’t mean the pictures are clinical. Casual melancholy fills Lew Allen’s 1958 shot of Buddy Holly sitting on his tour bus (Holly’s so perfectly positioned in the center of the frame, the composition could be by Poussin). Daniel Kramer’s photograph of Bob Dylan, Peter Yarrow, and John Hammond Jr. trying to hail a cab in New York might be the greatest street photo Garry Winogrand never took. You don’t even have to notice the bystander on the right — she’s like the woman who scowls when Mary flips her hat in the “Mary Tyler Moore Show’’ opening — to register the scene’s deep hilarity.

“Who Shot Rock & Roll’’ has almost as much humor as energy. A lot of the humor hinges on incongruity. Jerry Schatzberg shows Frank Zappa looking Valley Girl-cute in pigtails (his thick black mustache and soul patch rather undercut the effect). A man in a bowler hat sneaks a peek in the background as the Yardbirds pose on a London street (and, yes, Jeff Beck wears plimsolls). Johnny Cash flips someone the bird at San Quentin. Was it the warden or a TV crew? Accounts differ.

But just as abominations like art rock began to emerge, so does the photography begin to enter its own mannerist phase. Art Kane jiggles his camera so it appears Aretha Franklin has halos in her eyes (like, you know, gospel music). Hipgnosis, the team of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, and its heightened-consciousness ilk started art-directing whimsy (the cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy,’’ for example). Sometimes it’s not the photographer who’s at fault. In 1973, Gloria Stavers shoots David Bowie as unfussily as unfussy can be — but the paisley jumpsuit Bowie’s wearing! In fairness, maybe he had it on to keep people from noticing his mullet.

Gigantism and self-consciousness begin to run riot once rock has conquered the commercial mainstream. That hardly means an end to classic images. The show includes Bob Gruen’s famous 1974 shot of John Lennon wearing a sleeveless New York City T-shirt (we get to see all nine exposures from the contact sheet; Gruen picked the right one). Because it’s the cover of the Clash’s “London Calling’’ album, Pennie Smith’s 1979 photograph of Paul Simonon smashing his guitar onstage has a special place in rock history. Who knew that she initially objected to its selection because it’s out of focus?

“Who Shot Rock & Roll’’ reaches a kind of visual and thematic crescendo with Gursky’s “Madonna I,’’ from 2001. The photograph is immense, nearly 10 feet by 7 feet. Gursky digitally recombined 15 images of a Los Angeles concert by the singer. We see the crowd, the stage machinery, even Madonna, looking so tiny she could be a lounge act imported from Lilliput. The result is arresting, stupendous, aptly spectacular — a spectacle of a spectacle. It’s wow spelled forward, backward, and upside down (which is, of course, “mom,’’ speaking of madonnas). But as Dick Clark used to say — or maybe it was Ansel Adams — can you dance to it?

Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.