Paul McCartney has announced new photography exhibition and book, featuring his photographs from the Beatles‘ performances when Beatlemania erupted in the U.K. and many never-before-seen portraits of his bandmates John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
In 2020, an extraordinary trove of nearly a thousand photographs taken by McCartney on a 35mm camera was re-discovered in his archive. They intimately record the months towards the end of 1963 and beginning of 1964, when the Beatles toured Liverpool, London, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C. and Miami.
“Anyone who rediscovers a personal relic or family treasure is instantly flooded with memories and emotions, which then trigger associations buried in the haze of time,” said McCartney. “This was exactly my experience in seeing these photos, all taken over an intense three-month period of travel, culminating in February 1964. It was a wonderful sensation to be plunged right back.”
“Here was my own record of our first huge trip, a photographic journal of The Beatles in six cities, beginning in Liverpool and London, followed by Paris (where John and I had been ordinary hitchhikers just over two years before), and then what we regarded as the big time, our first visit as a group to America,” he added.
The exhibition, titled “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm,” will open at the London National Portrait Gallery on June 28, the week that follows the gallery’s reopening. It will run up to October 1.
In a new book accompanying the exhibition, McCartney presents 275 of his own photographs from the six city portfolios.
In his Foreword and Introductions, McCartney remembers “what else can you call it – pandemonium” and conveys his impressions of Britain and America in 1964 – the moment when the culture changed and the Sixties really began.
The book also features Beatleland, an Introduction by Harvard historian and New Yorker essayist Jill Lepore; A Preface by Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London; and Another Lens, an essay by Senior Curator Rosie Broadley.
“1964: Eyes of the Storm” is available to pre-order at https://www.paulmccartney.com/eyesofthestorm.
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