Before Paul McCartney’s musical success made him both a knight and a Guinness Book World Record holder, he was a wide-eyed 21-year-old documenting his first brush with fame on a Pentax camera. 

Part of his personal photo collection from that time are on display in the U.S. first the first time at the Chrysler Museum. The free exhibit features 250 never-before-seen photos McCartney took during the pivotal months of December 1963  to February 1964 when the Beatles catapulted from a popular UK act to universal sensation. 

The images follow the Fab Four from London and Liverpool to Paris, New York, Washington, and, finally, Miami during a tour that would cement the Beatles’ role as global superstars and ignite the cultural phenomenon that was Beetlemania.

History canonizes this tour as a beginning, but it just as easily could have been a one-off fad.

“They really didn’t know how long this moment was going to last,” said Sarah Brown, McCartney’s photographic curator and archivist. “Luckily, he captured it on camera.”

The frenzied fans made McCartney “feel like a film star,” Brown said. “They had never really seen that kind of reaction to musicians before.”

Lloyd Dewitt, Chrysler’s senior curator, said McCartney’s primary motivation for the exhibit was to give “a gift to fans” to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the tour “that changed everyone’s lives” and created the soundtrack for a generation.

“It’s a lot about his own memories," Dewitt said. 

In America, McCartney’s lens was often aimed out the window as they traveled, with McCartney capturing photos of ordinary Americans and details such as police uniforms. The resulting images are from a “tourist angle,” Brown said.

The photo collection was rediscovered in 2020 as never-before-printed negatives and contact sheets, something Dewitt views as an advantage.  

“You’re not dealing with vintage prints and their limitations,” he said. The large, high-resolution images were scanned and printed for the first time in London using state-of-the-art equipment. 

“You are really able to take advantage of modern technology,” Dewitt said.

DeWitt said that the Chrysler exhibit largely replicates the London world opening in terms of color scheme and layout, but notes that the Chrysler took advantage of their flexible space to help viewers “make connections across the show and see the evolution.”

 “They grow a little as you go,” he said. 

@whropublicmedia

It's here! 🙌 📸 The 'Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm' exhibition is now open to the public at The Chrysler Museumof Art in Norfolk! ✨️ Featuring more than 250 photographs taken by Paul McCartney between November 1963 and February 1964, ‘Eyes of the Storm’ illuminates the period in which The Beatles became international superstars. 🎵 The exhibition runs through April 7, 2024!

♬ Here Comes The Sun / The Inner Light - The Beatles

McCartney curated each photo for the exhibit, including their sizes and frames. 

“It’s all under Paul’s supervision,” DeWitt said.  “He’s giving us this experience.”

The photos create an intimacy that brings viewers “behind the scenes,” DeWitt said. The vantagepoint makes “us like his friends. We get to be in that same space.”

According to Brown, despite the fact that many of the people in the photos have passed away, the images bring McCartney only joy.  

“He remembers the happy times with those people,” she said. “You get a really intimate sense of how he approaches memory and how he thinks back to that pivotal point in his life.”

“Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm” runs through April 7, 2024 at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk. For more information, contact the Chrysler.

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