Artist: Paul McCartney

Gagosian presents Rearview Mirror, an exhibition of recently rediscovered photographs by Paul McCartney. Featuring thirty-six works composed of images taken between December 1963 and February 1964, it presents a rare opportunity to acquire selected photographs—including some previously unseen—from McCartney’s personal archive. It is the first time McCartney has made signed editions of his photographs available.

Evoking an indelible snapshot of Beatlemania as it grew into a global phenomenon, the photographs on view embody a poignant intersection of time, place, and personality. Taken together, they form a significant contribution to the visual record of the era, not only due to their unique perspective, but also because they reveal an unheralded aspect of McCartney’s versatile talents. The mix of black-and-white and color prints includes self-portraits, unguarded views of McCartney’s bandmates, and vivid depictions of the pandemonium that greeted them at every turn. Some of the most compelling photographs portray scenes glimpsed through the windows of moving vehicles as McCartney and his fellow Beatles were whisked from one appearance to the next.

Following the arc of The Beatles’ progress, the exhibition begins with photographs McCartney took in Liverpool and London soon after acquiring a 35 mm Pentax camera. These earlier pictures are by turns self-reflective and playful, projecting a certain innocence. The photographs McCartney shot in Paris show the band mobbed in the streets by press and photographers, while the ones he took in the United States convey the awe of having arrived in the country whose rock ’n’ roll pioneers had such an indelible influence on The Beatles’ early work. In these pictures his interactions with fans predominate, whether it be the crowds held back by barricades outside the Plaza Hotel in New York or the sea of well-wishers who turned out to greet the Fab Four upon their arrival in Miami. These and other photographs on view have been given captions that illuminate their subjects’ precise locations and circumstances.

Accompanying McCartney’s photographs is an installation of contemporaneous ephemera as well as excerpts of cinema verité-style footage of The Beatles recorded by the pioneering American filmmakers Albert and David Maysles, who were granted access to document the group during their first US visit in February 1964.

For this exhibition, McCartney has collaborated with Gagosian and Griffin Editions, the renowned fine art printing studio, to remaster his original negatives and contact sheets to produce the prints in small editions, each print framed in a bespoke signature profile of his design. A portion of sale proceeds will be donated to support ongoing recovery and rebuilding efforts in Southern California following the devastating wildfires earlier this year.

The exhibition in Beverly Hills is organized by Gagosian’s Joshua Chuang, formerly curator of photography at the New York Public Library, and designed by Stefan Beckman, who previously worked with the gallery on exhibition designs for Avedon 100 at Gagosian New York (2023) and Jean-Michel Basquiat: Made on Market Street at Gagosian Beverly Hills (2024). It coincides with the touring exhibition Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm, which debuted at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2023 and is currently on view at the de Young in San Francisco through July 6, 2025.

Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool, England, in 1942. Passionate about art from a young age, McCartney became attuned to the medium of photography as a teenager upon seeing the pictures published in the sports section of the Observer, as well as those taken by his younger brother, Michael. This was reinforced when The Beatles, during their time in Hamburg, Germany, befriended the photographers Astrid Kirchherr and Jürgen Vollmer, who were influential in helping the group form a distinct visual identity. In the mid-1960s McCartney encountered the British avant-garde through John Dunbar, a cofounder of Indica Books and Gallery, and gallerist Robert Fraser, who introduced McCartney to Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenberg, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton—the latter two artists invited by McCartney to design Beatles album covers that became instantly iconic. In the early 1980s, inspired by a discussion with Willem de Kooning, McCartney took up painting, exhibiting his work at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, in 2000, and at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, in 2002. The debut exhibition of his photographs, Eyes of the Storm, was organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2023.