Sample: Beatlemania through the eyes of McCartney

Beatlemania seen through the eyes of Paul McCartney is the focus of the exhibition that the National Portrait Gallery in London is dedicating to photos taken by the British musician himself with a Pentax camera in the early 60s of the last century, when the Liverpool foursome became a world phenomenon.

With this sample, the so-called “Eyes of the Storm” The gallery is also celebrating its reopening after an ambitious renovation, considered the most important in its history.

The photos, which McCartney found in his archive in 2020 during the pandemic, were taken between November 1963 and February 1964 while the foursome were on a world tour.

Many intimate moments of the other members of the band have been collected in the pictures –John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr– and offer a unique view of the environment, personality and the way the musicians experienced the phenomenon that grew around them.

It includes portraits of his bandmates and also his representative Brian Epstein amidst moments of concentration, relaxation and, also, joy.

These are unpublished photos. never put on paper and McCartney himself dedicated his time to help the gallery bring these Beatles moments to the general public.

Director National Portrait GalleryNicholas Cullinan, told EFE that this exhibition is “fascinating because, of course, the Beatles are so famous, almost legendary”, but to see “all these photos that show for the first time what Beatlomania was like for the Beatles” is “extraordinary”.

The manager described him as “fantastic” to work with McCartney P.for this exhibition, noting that he was entrusted with “such an incredible archive” and that he was “generous with his time, dedicating hours and hours to share his memories behind each piece. It really brought a very intimate sense of what it’s like to live.”

Since the photographs were never transferred to paper because there were only negatives, a team of renowned photographic experts worked on the processing of the images.

Photographs were taken, mostly black and white Liverpool, London, Paris, New York, Washington DC., as well as in Miami – the latter in color – .

The exhibition is divided into several rooms, each of which is dedicated to the six cities that the four visited at the height of the Beatles, and there are also posters of screaming women in the United States and newspaper clippings that reported on the musical success.

You can see the others in these photos band members in relaxed moments, swimming in a pool in Miami or on a trip, and you can also see pictures of their interviews for American television.

“We were just wondering about the world, excited about all these little things that shaped our lives. We were fascinated by what we were doing and what was happening to us and that’s something I’ve never lost. I’ve never lost that sense of wonder,” McCartney writes on on the exhibition wall.

Along with the exhibition, a book with the same title was published “Eyes of the Storm”which was published on the 13th by the publishing house Liburak from Spain and which has an introduction by Paul McCartey himself who says: “Suddenly millions of eyes fell on us, creating an image that I will never forget for the rest of my life”.