Paul McCartney. “Air Mail” magazine. 1964.
By Paul Goldfinger, MD, Editor, Blogfinger.net.
In 1964 the Beatles were on a world tour. In addition to his musical activities, Paul McCartney kept busy photographing the band and the scenery. He used a Pentax camera borrowed from a then-girl friend.
The online magazine Air Mail report said, “This exhibition at Gagosian in Los Angeles features 36 photographs that the 21-year-old McCartney took while on tour in 1963 and 64. The subjects include his bandmates George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon, foreign landscapes from Liverpool to Miami, and himself. “Most of them I don’t remember taking,” McCartney has said, “because it was a whirlwind.” —Carolina de Armas
Back then most photographs were obtained in 35 mm Kodak black and white.
It was in 1966 that I began my serious efforts in photography, but I needed a serious camera. A friend in the Army returned from Korea with a 35 mm Pentax (Japan) Spotmatic camera—that was the start of a new era in my life. I loved that camera.
I like this image partly because it was an early selfie, obtained long before digital cameras/phones. And the slightly blurry image and off-beat composition was, like his music, totally original.
BEATLES:
