Beatlemania is returning to London. Gagosian will present a new exhibition of photographs by Paul McCartney documenting the earliest months of Beatlemania, on the cusp of the band’s rise to international fame. “Rearview Mirror: Liverpool—London—Paris” opens on August 28th at the gallery’s Davies Street location in London, featuring rare, signed prints drawn from the musician’s personal archive.
The show spans works from December 1963 to February 1964, when The Beatles’s popularity in the United Kingdom began to explode. Taken with McCartney’s 35mm Pentax camera, the images follow the group as they toured in Britain and performed a three-week residency in Paris. Together, the works form a rare look inside the band’s most formative era.
McCartney’s photographs record moments linked to key milestones in the band’s history. These include their first headlining UK tour, a record-breaking appearance on the BBC’s Juke Box Jury, performances on The Beatles Christmas Show, and time spent at the Olympia Theatre in Paris. Notably, the photographs precede their February 7, 1964, departure for New York, the trip that marked their American debut.
A lot of these images are from negatives and contact sheets believed to be lost for more than 50 years. Each print has been remastered and signed by McCartney, produced in small editions. Large contact sheets depict candid vignettes backstage at venues such as the Lewisham Odeon and London Palladium, as well as a tense behind-the-scenes glimpse of the band departing the London airport for the United States.
“Rearview Mirror” follows the McCartney’s debut at Gagosian earlier this year at the gallery’s Beverly Hills branch and coincides with the traveling exhibition “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm.” That show originated at the National Portrait Gallery in 2023 and is currently on view at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, through October 5th.
Beyond his photography, McCartney also took up painting after a conversation with Willem de Kooning in the early 1980s. He has presented his work at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol in 2000 and at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool in 2002, among other venues.
