Eyes of The Storm is a magical, unmissable exhibition of 250 never before seen backstage pictures taken by Paul McCartney between November 1963 and February 1964. In an introduction to the exhibition, McCartney says that, ‘I’m not setting out to be seen as a master photographer, more an occasional photographer who happened to be in the right place at the right time’. Even if McCartney isn’t technically brilliant (although to my relatively untrained, photography ‘O’ level grade C eyes, the shots appear to be high quality stuff) he made the most of his unique position to capture his fellow Beatles and entourage on film like no one else could ever do.
There is an unequalled intimacy to McCartney’s candid portraits of Lennon, Harrison and Starr that is just beguiling. It’s as though the camera doesn’t exist; there’s no barrier between McCartney and his subjects who are seemingly captured at their most relaxed. His shots of Mal Evans and Brian Epstein are also wonderful. All of them appear in the first part of the exhibition which documents the band’s 1963 autumn UK tour, the filming of an episode of Juke Box Jury and It’s the Beatles for the BBC in Liverpool, The Beatles Christmas Show at the Astoria in Finsbury Park and their London Palladium shows in January 1964. The photographs of The Beatles hectic trip to Paris, also in January 1964 also contains some great images including Harrison dressed as a gendarme.
The exhibition is less successful when The Beatles make their first visit to America and McCartney turns his attention away from the band and towards ‘airport workers, the police and the press photographers’. While it’s interesting to get a inside-out view of Beatlemania, there are a few too many mundane snapshots. Things pick up when McCartney arrives in Miami and starts shooting in colour (there’s a specially commissioned film with a new score by McCartney playing in the Miami room which adds interest) although there is more than a hint of holiday snap to many of the pictures.
Despite these minor shortcomings, Eyes of the Storm is an absolute joy. I found myself grinning like an idiot for most of the hour I spent in the gallery. I would allow at least that to see the exhibition and more like 90 minutes to do it proper justice. The galleries were quite packed on a late Thursday afternoon so it’s probably worth going early morning if you can, I imagine this will be a popular show and rightly so. Any Beatles fan will absolutely love it.
Eyes of the Storm is on at the National Portrait Gallery until 1 October 2023. Click here for more information.
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