Paul McCartney has announced a new photo book 1964: Eyes of the Storm, a compilation of photographs the Beatle took in late 1963 and early 1964.
The book will contain 275 35mm images comprising Paul McCartney‘s personal record of the time when Beatlemania was first becoming a global phenomenon, documenting the musician’s travels through Europe and the United States.
“Anyone who rediscovers a personal relic or family treasure is instantly flooded with memories and emotions, which then trigger associations buried in the haze of time,” said McCartney of the photographs. “This was exactly my experience in seeing these photos, all taken over an intense three-month period of travel, culminating in February 1964.”
The photo book will feature a foreword by McCartney, an introduction by Harvard historian Jill Lepore, a preface by the director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, Nicholas Cullinan, and an essay by senior curator Rosie Broadley, as well as never-before-seen portraits of John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.
In addition to the photo book, McCartney’s photographs will also be exhibited at London’s National Portrait Gallery from the 28th of June to the 1st of October 2023.
McCartney began work on the photo book and exhibition in 2020 when he rediscovered hundreds of his old photographs in his archives.
“It was a wonderful sensation to be plunged right back. Here was my own record of our first huge trip,” McCartney wrote in press materials accompanying the announcement. “A photographic journal of The Beatles in six cities, beginning in Liverpool and London, followed by Paris (where John and I had been ordinary hitchhikers three years before), and then what we regarded as the big time, our first visit as a group to America.”
1964: Eyes of the Storm will be published on the 13th of June via Penguin publishing.
