The Beatle (Sir) Paul McCartney played bass guitar in the most successful bands of all time but he also shared primary songwriting with John Lennon. That songwriting partnership with Lennon remains the most successful in history.  He was also married to the late Linda McCartney who we believe he met when in the late 1960s, when she became the unofficial house photographer at Filmore East, photographing numerous performances at the legendary club.  McCartney was the first woman to have a photograph on the cover of the influential music journal Rolling Stone her photographs were displayed in galleries and museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, and were collected in several books.

Now In a stunning new Exhibition at London’s Portrait Gallery, we get to see Paul’s photography and we immediately assumed that this body of work was influenced by his wife’s very distinct style but we were wrong.  The Exhibit is Titled Paul McCartney  Photographs  1963–64 Eyes of the Storm … and the McCartneys didn’t marry until 1969

In this show, the focus is on portraits captured by McCartney, using his own camera, between December 1963 and February 1964 – a time when The Beatles were catapulted from a British sensation to a global phenomenon. These never-before-seen images offer a uniquely personal perspective on what it was like to be a ‘Beatle’ at the start of ‘Beatlemania’ – and adjusting from playing gigs on UK stages to performing to 73 million Americans on The Ed Sullivan Show. At a time when so many camera lenses were on the band, it is Paul McCartney’s which tells the truest story of a band creating cultural history – in one of its most exciting chapters.

The National Portrait Gallery is located on St Martin’s Place, London,
28 June - 1 October 2023