London Gallery to Show Unseen Paul McCartney Photos From Peak Beatles Era

A trove of previously unseen photos taken by Paul McCartney as The Beatles shot to global stardom will go on display in London this year.

The National Portrait Gallery announced Wednesday (Jan. 25) that the exhibition, titled “Eyes of the Storm,” will help mark the gallery’s reopening in June after a three-year refurbishment. Gallery director Nicholas Cullinan said McCartney, approached the gallery in 2020 saying he had rediscovered a batch of photos from late 1963 and early 1964 that he had thought were lost.

Cullinan said they were an “extraordinary” set of images of “such a famous and important cultural moment … taken by someone who was really, as the exhibition title alludes, in the eye of the storm.”

“Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of The Storm” opens June 28 and runs to Oct. 1. The gallery is due to reopen June 22. Other exhibitions slated for this year include a retrospective of the 20th-century English photographer Yevonde, a show of drawings by David Hockney and an exhibition of portraits by Black artists from the U.S. and Britain.

In December, McCartney released a sprawling box set, The 7″ Singles Box, which collected more than 50 years of singles in a wood crate that tells the story of his post-Beatles career from 1970 to 2021. The 3,000 copy limited-edition set ropes in some of his biggest solo and Wings singles, including “Band on the Run” and “Maybe I’m Amazed,” as well as goofy ephemera like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reggae,” for a total of 65 re-creations of previous 7-inch releases and 15 new ones.