Paul McCartney

Gagosian is pleased to present Rearview Mirror: Liverpool–London–Paris, an exhibition of photographs by Paul McCartney opening on August 28 at the Davies Street gallery in London. The works chronicle McCartney and his fellow Beatles as their reputation spread beyond Liverpool and Hamburg between December 1963 and early February 1964. Each picture was taken with McCartney’s 35mm Pentax camera, acquired in late 1963 around the time that the term “Beatlemania” was coined to describe the unprecedented mass hysteria that followed the band’s every move.

Seen from McCartney’s perspective as both protagonist and observer, his photographs—a mix of single frames and multi-image works—comprise a singular contribution to the visual record of the 1960s, a culturally and socially transformative decade. Shot with unassuming candor, the works at Davies Street offer an intimate account of the band as they toured across the UK and in Paris in the formative weeks before their debut visit to America. They show the in-between moments tied to key events in The Beatles’ trajectory: their autumn 1963 UK tour, their first as headliners; their appearance on the BBC’s Juke Box Jury, which garnered a record 23 million viewers; The Beatles Christmas Show, which greatly broadened their appeal; and their three-week residency at the Olympia Theatre in Paris, an early proving ground.

An enigmatic self-portrait shows McCartney reflected in the mirror of his attic room—where he dreamed the melody for “Yesterday”—in the London family home of his then-girlfriend, Jane Asher. The group’s camaraderie and cool is captured in atmospheric scenes backstage at the Lewisham Odeon, London Palladium, and Finsbury Park Astoria. Enlarged contact sheets recount in rich detail vignettes marked by an unguardedness that could only have been recorded by one of their own, including the charged moments before the band’s transatlantic flight took off for New York.

Remastered from original negatives and contact sheets thought to have been lost for over half a century, each of the works has been prominently signed by McCartney, issued in a small edition, and framed in a bespoke profile of his design. Rearview Mirror: Liverpool–London–Paris follows McCartney’s debut presentation at the gallery earlier this year at Gagosian Beverly Hills, and coincides with the touring exhibition Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm, which opened at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2023 and which is currently on view at the de Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, through October 5.