Kiss does the “The Elder” photo session

On 27. June, 1981, Kiss did the “The Elder” photo session with Barry Levine in New York. The photos were not used for the worldwide album graphics (but was used on the Japanese version). One of the photos was used a year later for the “Killers” compilation.

Tim McPhate and Julian Gill:
“Levine has stated that his “toughest” assignment with KISS was the shoot for “Music From The Elder.” For this shoot, Levine built geometrical sets to photograph the band against. Two backdrops were applied, one of which was stark white and the other featuring a bright pink color coupled with what almost looks like a yellow light saber. A shot with the latter background can be seen on the “Killers” album cover. This was Levine’s last session with the band until he photographed them in 1996 prior to the Alive/Worldwide tour.

There’s no photo of the band at all within the album’s packaging, which is certainly an anomaly. Was there a discussion about a photo of the band being featured in the final art?

I don’t recall. But if you look at it backwards, the fact that they’re not there anywhere definitely was done on purpose, by design. It was probably talked about very briefly. It was kind of a taken for granted thing that they wouldn’t be [featured] because it’s the soundtrack to a movie. You know, they’re not in the movie so I think they wanted to keep it ambiguous so that it wasn’t, you know, these guys dressed up in their funny costumes. It was the soundtrack to the movie about a kid being mentored by Elders. They’ve been here since the beginning of time, blah, blah, blah.

There are some photo shoots from the time featuring the band in their “Elder” costumes. You would have been present at these?
I don’t know. What were they?

There was a session with a laser in the background.
Yeah, Barry Levine [shot those]. We were just shooting pictures for publicity really. Just to have pictures because you have to …”
– “Odyssey” by Tim McPhate and Julian Gill.