Paul McCartney’s Fab Photos Opens at Gagosian in Beverly Hills

Paul McCartney, George Harrison. Miami Beach (1964). Chromogenic print. © 1964 PaulMcCartney under exclusive license to MPL Archive LLP.

Rearview Mirror, an exhibition of recently rediscovered photographs by Paul McCartney, opens April 25 at Gagosian in Beverly Hills. Below, we republish B Scene Zine’s story about the McCartney photos when they were featured at the Brooklyn Museum.

The touring exhibition, Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm, debuted at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2023 before its stop in Brookln and is currently on view at the de Young in San Francisco through July 6, 2025. The Gagosian show is the first time McCartney has made signed editions of his photographs available.

Here’s some of what Gagosian said in it press release about the photographs

Evoking an indelible snapshot of Beatlemania as it grew into a global phenomenon, the photographs on view embody a poignant intersection of time, place, and personality. Taken together, they form a significant contribution to the visual record of the era, not only due to their unique perspective, but also because they reveal an unheralded aspect of McCartney’s versatile talents. The mix of black-and-white and color prints includes self-portraits, unguarded views of McCartney’s bandmates, and vivid depictions of the pandemonium that greeted them at every turn. Some of the most compelling photographs portray scenes glimpsed through the windows of moving vehicles as McCartney and his fellow Beatles were whisked from one appearance to the next.

Following the arc of The Beatles’ progress, the exhibition begins with photographs McCartney took in Liverpool and London soon after acquiring a 35 mm Pentax camera. These earlier pictures are by turns self-reflective and playful, projecting a certain innocence. The photographs McCartney shot in Paris show the band mobbed in the streets by press and photographers, while the ones he took in the United States convey the awe of having arrived in the country whose rock ’n’ roll pioneers had such an indelible influence on The Beatles’ early work. In these pictures his interactions with fans predominate, whether it be the crowds held back by barricades outside the Plaza Hotel in New York or the sea of well-wishers who turned out to greet the Fab Four upon their arrival in Miami. These and other photographs on view have been given captions that illuminate their subjects’ precise locations and circumstances.

Accompanying McCartney’s photographs is an installation of contemporaneous ephemera as well as excerpts of cinema verité-style footage of The Beatles recorded by the pioneering American filmmakers Albert and David Maysles, who were granted access to document the group during their first US visit in February 1964.

Paul McCartney’s Fab Photos at Brooklyn Museum

Musicians who make visual art are not uncommon. David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, and Sharon Stone have all painted, while Lenny Kravitz, Michael Stipe, and Patti Smith were serious photographers.

But rarely does an amateur blend raw talent, a knack for gleaning insights from professionals, and insider access to capture historically significant moments like those featured in Paul McCartney's Photographs 1963–1964: Eyes of the Storm, which first showed at the National Portrait Gallery in London and is on view at the Brooklyn Museum in New York from 3 May to 18 August.

Shot at the height of Beatlemania, the selection of over 250 largely black and white photos offers a rare glimpse into the private lives of four young men on the cusp of changing the world. More than mere snapshots taken in the right place at the right time, they are thoughtfully composed works that just happen to feature moments critical to the evolution of 20th Century art and culture.

Paul McCartney, Self-portrait, London (1963). Pigmented inkjet print. © 1963 Paul McCartney underexclusive license to MPL Archive LLP.

'Everywhere I went, I just took pictures,' McCartney shared with the National Portrait Gallery. But Catherine Futter, director of curatorial affairs at the Brooklyn Museum, said Sir Paul took the art of photography much more seriously than that, having learned from the many professional photographers he encountered during the Beatles' rise.

'They had the press photographers as well as photographers taking album covers and he was learning from them... He's blending the two: he has the access, but he's also making a very composed shot,' Futter told Ocula.

More than a voyeuristic glimpse at a tumultuous year, they're also a portrait of four young men whose lives were upended by their success, precisely at the moment their reality shifted irrevocably.

Paul McCartney, Photographers, Central Park, New York (1964). Pigmented inkjet print. © 1964 Paul McCartney under exclusive license to MPLArchive LLP.

From the image of an awkward Ringo setting up his drum kit for the Beatles' debut on the Ed Sullivan Show to the throngs of adoring fans held back by police and barricades in front of the Plaza Hotel, this trove of photos, recently rediscovered by McCartney, ranges from intimate and introspective to something approaching photojournalism.

McCartney captures a pensive John Lennon in the back of a cab wearing heavy black-framed glasses and the 'mop top' that would define the group's early look, holding a loosely closed fist to his mouth and gazing deeply into the lens of McCartney's Pentax film camera. It's a prescient preview of the poet who was just then emerging.

In a later Kodachrome taken in Miami Beach, we see a shirtless George Harrison accept a cocktail from a woman in a bright yellow tankini. The shot seems to captures the young man accepting the mantle of superstardom, perhaps for the first time.

Another image suggests this process of becoming wasn't straightforward or linear. A candid shot captured in Paris shows an embarrassed Ringo Starr wearing a ridiculous hat for a staged photo shoot, forlorn as a puppy forced into a costume.

Originally published in Ocula.