Pop art – The Beatles caught on camera

Associated media

While the Beatles were conquering the world, an Anglo-Australian photographer with a surreal sensibility captured their hey-day on film

With the disbandment of the English pop music phenomenon The Beatles in 1970 visual memories of the group’s rapid rise to fame from 1963 is recalled today through film and photographic memorabilia. On show now at Proud Galleries, King’s Road, London is ‘The Beatles: Inside and Out’ an exhibition featuring rare photographs of the group: George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, taken by British photographer Robert Whitaker.

On 11 February 1963 a fledgling Liverpool band ‘The Beatles’ recorded 10 tracks for their first album of 14 songs. It was a mammoth recording session lasting over nine hours. The album was named after their successful second single ‘Please Please Me’, released in January 1963, which had reached No.1 in the UK record charts. The album was rush-released on 22 March 1963 by the record label Parlephone, to capitalize on the group’s success. There followed the band’s spectacularly successful UK and international tours.

The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, met photographer Robert Whitaker (1939–2011), in Australia during the group’s tour in 1964. Whitaker, then living in Melbourne, photographed Epstein for a newspaper article. Epstein liked the result and offered Whitaker a job as staff photographer for his company NEMS. Whitaker initially refused the offer but changed his mind after seeing The Beatles perform on stage. He accepted Epstein’s commission to photograph them on tour.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Whitaker’s first photo session with The Beatles in 1964 many previously unseen photographs are on display in the Proud Galleries show, both vintage prints and limited editions. During his time with the group, from 1964–66, Whitaker was allowed unlimited access to them in their professional lives. They accepted many of his ideas for photo-shoots, including the infamous ‘Yesterday and Today’ American album cover for Capitol Records.

This image was colloquially known as the ‘butcher cover’. The group posed in white 'butcher's' coats clutching joints of raw meat, and decapitated dolls. John Lennon maintained that ‘It was inspired by our boredom and resentment at having to do another photo session and another Beatles thing. We were sick to death of it. Bob [Whitaker] was into Dali and making surreal pictures’. It was said that Whitaker had intended it be a satirical, surreal pop-art comment on the band’s fame. But the adverse publicity that emanated following publication soon removed the photographs from the album and from The Beatles publicity shots. Photographs from this session are on display in ‘The Beatles: Inside and Out’. They are rare collector’s pieces.

Whitaker became a friend, confidante and member of the group’s inner circle of friends. Mick Jagger called him ‘Super click’. On show are intimate individual portraits of McCartney, Lennon, Starr and Harrison in addition to pictures taken at recording sessions, on set for their film ‘Help!’ and reportage shots taken on tour. Comparing official publicity shots of pop groups today, available to see on the internet, Whitaker’s photographs feel ahead of their time, at the forefront in terms of capturing the essence of the group’s mentality and individual characters.  Some poses are stiff to the point of exposing the boredom that the group felt, taking part in the photo session. This is demonstrated in publicity shots taken in Chiswick Park, 1964. Some of the works in this show are rare and will appeal to older fans and new collectors. All works are for sale.

Whitaker’s book Eight days a Week (Endeavour London Ltd, May 2010), which includes photographs from this exhibition, follows The Beatles on their final world tour in 1966. In words and images the reader is taken from the opening concert in Hamburg, through to Japan where the four were locked in their hotel for security, and fleeing in Manila after accidentally insulting Imelda Marcos, wife of the country’s president. Whitaker captured in photographs these moments in the group’s life together. T

he photographs on display at Proud Galleries, Chelsea, London, reveal days in the lives of John, Paul, George and Ringo perceived through Whitaker’s lens. The best are in black and white, a medium of photography that defines the 1960s in music and fashion. A self-portrait by Whitaker ‘Robert Whitaker and George Harrison’, Chiswick, 1966, is included here alongside images of Harrison, taken whilst filming Way Out in London in 1966, and the back cover sleeve of Revolver, 1966, a defining album of the group’s career.

Robert Whitaker was born in Hertfordshire, England, to an English mother and Australian father. His photographic style was often influenced by his friend, the surrealist artist Salvador Dali.  After his two-year stint photographing The Beatles ended in 1966, Whitaker returned to London to help create the avant-garde magazine Oz with Australian artist Martin Sharp. He would later become a war photographer in Vietnam, working for Time and Life magazines. His work is widely acknowledged in global exhibitions. ‘The Beatles: Inside and Out’ is a capsule showcase of his ability to capture the essence of the most famous pop group of the 20th century.