Yesterday, All His Photos Seemed So Far Away

It’s not exactly the National Portrait Gallery in London. Or the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Or even the Portland Art Museum. But at long last, after a two-year wait, Los Angeles has finally found a home for Paul McCartney’s historic snapshots from the Beatles’ first American invasion.

McCartney’s photos — candid, wide-eyed, sometimes a bit blurry — are now on view at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills through June 21. And unlike at those earlier, fancier stops, in L.A., the prints have price tags. You can actually buy one.

But first, for those unfamiliar with McCartney’s globe-trotting photo exhibit, a little backstory.

In late 1963, just before the Beatles boarded Pan Am Flight 101 to tape their world-shaking Ed Sullivan Show debut, McCartney got himself a new camera — a sexy little 35mm Pentax SLR. He took it everywhere and photographed just about everything: the mop tops goofing around on the plane, the Fab Four strolling through Central Park, their post-Sullivan jaunt to Miami.

Then McCartney apparently forgot all about the pictures. They were boxed up and stored away… for the next 60 years.

Flash forward to the pandemic, when Sir Paul — like the rest of us — started rummaging through closets. That’s when he and his team rediscovered the long-lost contact sheets, negatives and color slides. The result was Eye of the Storm, a photo exhibit that premiered at London’s National Portrait Gallery in 2023. It was such a hit that McCartney decided to take the pictures on the road. Along with Brooklyn and Portland, the show has visited museums in Virginia, Tokyo and — its current stop — San Francisco.

But for L.A., McCartney did something different. Rather than offer the exhibit to The Broad or LACMA or the Annenberg, he and his team assembled a slightly different batch of images from the same period — including some previously unseen — retitled the collection Rearview Mirror, and brought it to the Gagosian, where the works could be more than admired. They could be acquired.

The 36 works on display — some solo images, some contact sheets featuring dozens of frames — are being sold in ultra-limited editions of six to ten signed prints each, priced between $15,000 and $85,000 (yes, per photo).

Think of it as concert merch for billionaires — if your idea of a band tee involves authentication and a custom frame.

“Well, not quite,” says Joshua Chuang, the gallery’s director. “There’s some overlap with the images from Eye of the Storm, but even those images look different in our show. And, yes, the big difference is the fact that you can purchase them.”

Honestly, if you can afford it, why not? Although better known for his musical talents, McCartney turns out to have been a pretty fabulous photographer. And he and his Pentax were certainly in the right place at the right time. “This is the only time I can think of where someone of Paul’s cultural impact took very good pictures of the exact moment you’d want him to be taking pictures,” notes Chuang.

At the time, of course, the Beatles were among the most photographed humans on Earth — which is also what makes these photos so illuminating. They offer a Paul’s-eye view of what the Beatles saw when they landed in America. “There’s almost a sense in his pictures of a shared awe about what was happening to them,” Chuang says. “Like even they couldn’t believe it.”

Another reason to check out the exhibit? It’s likely never going to happen again. “Paul’s not trying to launch another career as a fine art photographer,” Chuang says. “These are limited editions — six, eight, maybe ten copies — and that’s it.”