LONDON (AP) — Is there really a new way to look at The Beatles, one of the most filmed and photographed bands in history?

Yes, says Britain’s National Portrait Gallery, which is providing a fresh perspective with an exhibition of band’s-eye-view images that Paul McCartney captured as the group shot to global fame.

Gallery director Nicholas Cullinan said the exhibit, subtitled “Eyes of the Storm,” is a chance “to see, for the very first time, Beatlemania from the inside out.”

The seed for the exhibit was sown in 2020, that year of lockdown projects, when McCartney dug out 1,000 forgotten photos he’d taken in 1963 and 1964, as the Fab Four went from emerging British celebrities to world megastars. He and his team asked if the National Portrait Gallery was interested in displaying them.

“I think you can probably guess our response,” Cullinan said as he introduced the exhibition to journalists in London on Tuesday.

The show includes 250 photos taken in England, France and the United States that illustrate The Beatles’ journey from cramped dressing rooms in provincial British theaters to stadium shows and luxury hotels.

“It was a crazy whirlwind that we were living through,” McCartney writes in a note present at the start of the exhibit. “We were just wondering at the world, excited about all these little things that were making up our lives.”

Rosie Broadley, who curated the show, said the gallery soon realized the trove “wasn’t just interesting pictures by a famous person.”

“It’s actually telling an important story about cultural history — British cultural history and international cultural history,” she said. “This is a moment when British culture took over the world for a while.”

The display begins in late 1963, shortly after McCartney acquired a Pentax 35mm camera. The early black-and-white images include portraits of The Beatles, their parents, girlfriends, crew and colleagues, including manager Brian Epstein.

Broadley said these images depict “a parochial postwar British celebrity” — concerts in provincial cinemas alongside now-obscure bands like Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers, 16-night variety-style Christmas shows at London’s Finsbury Park Astoria.

Cullinan said the photos convey a “sense of intimacy” missing from professional photos of the band.

“This wasn’t The Beatles being photographed by press photographers of paparazzi but peer-to-peer,” he said. “So there’s a real tenderness and vulnerability to these images.”

In January 1964, McCartney took his camera with the band to Paris, capturing the city at the height of its French New Wave cool. While there, The Beatles learned that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was a No. 1 hit in the United States.

Within days, they were on a plane to New York, where their Feb. 9 performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” was watched by 73 million people, and nothing was ever the same again.

The U.S. section of the exhibit shows the band’s increasingly frenetic life. Many of the shots were taken from planes, trains and chauffeur-driven automobiles and show crowds of screaming fans and rows of police. Sometimes, McCartney turned his lens back on the newspaper and magazine photographers looking at him.

One striking shot was taken through the back window of a car as a crowd chased the band down a Manhattan street, a scene echoed in the band’s first feature film, “A Hard Day’s Night,” made later that year.

McCartney also took pictures of strangers – a girl seen through a train window, ground crew at Miami airport goofing around.

The band’s final stop was Miami, where McCartney switched to color film. The results, Broadley said, “look like a Technicolor movie, like an Elvis film.” The photos show John, Paul, George and Ringo swimming, sunbathing, water skiing, even fishing. From a hotel window, McCartney photographed fans writing “I love Paul” in giant letters in the sand.

McCartney, 81, spent hours talking to curators about the photos and his memories as they prepared the exhibit, one of the shows reopening the National Portrait Gallery after a three-year renovation.

The images were preserved for decades on undeveloped negatives or contact sheets, and McCartney had never seen them in large format until the gallery had them printed.

The project was not without risks. McCartney acknowledges he’s not a professional photographer – though his late wife, Linda McCartney, was, as is their daughter Mary McCartney. Some of the photos are blurry or hastily composed. But what they lack in technique they make up for in spontaneity.

Broadley said McCartney “was nervous about showing some of the less formally composed ones or the less in-focus ones.”

“But I think we persuaded him that we liked those because of the story that they tell,” she said. “It’s quite nice to have those ones where they’re sitting around with a cup of tea before the event.”

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“Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” is on at the National Portrait Gallery in London from Wednesday until Oct. 1.

Over 250 Pentax 35mm photographs the Beatles legend took in the four months between November 1963 and February 1964 – just as their star ascended at home and Beatlemania struck America – have been selected for the Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64 exhibition.

They come from over 1,000 shots unearthed, all but forgotten, from McCartney’s personal archive in 2020. Between them, and the accompanying photo-book 1964: Eyes of the Storm, they provide a wonderfully candid trip inside a phenomenon, mid-explosion.

Taking in the noirish focus and filmic framing of McCartney’s shots of early support acts and his nonchalant, cigarette-drooling self-portraits in hotel mirrors, you can better understand the affinity he’d go on to have with his first wife, the photographer Linda. And there are plentiful insights into the easygoing nature of the Hamburg-hardened Fab Four, found lounging in dressing rooms or guesting on Jukebox Jury largely unfazed by the gathering storm.

Amid plenty of pensive Ringos, awkward Georges and cheery Brian Epsteins, John Lennon is a flitting figure, sometimes serious and bespectacled, sometimes playful, clowning through his pre-show grooming routine or gooning to camera.

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Side-of-stage shots from 1963, taken on McCartney’s Pentax by crew members, offer an electric new angle on their live show and, backstage, moments of largely headwear-based fun emerge: George wearing a stack of top hats, or Ringo and John sporting Napoleonic bicorns.

As the media tumult descends in Paris in 1964 you can see the showmen in them leap to life, while the Paul’s-eye-view of The Beatles’ first visit to the US is a priceless historical document. From inside the chaos we witness hordes of blurry girl fans – some dressed as beauty queens; one, if you look closely enough, holding a chimpanzee – swarming over the roofs and runways of JFK airport or crammed against barriers outside New York’s Plaza Hotel. Portraits of bemused, overrun cops. Fans, through the rear window, chasing the band’s car through Manhattan on foot.

What we’re looking at is the first generation of teenage pop fandom, having cut its teeth howling at Elvis’s every gyration, now losing itself in full-blown hysteria and pushing at its limits, clawing at the boundary between fan and idol. Meanwhile, behind the camera, The Beatles are also fathoming how global superstardom works – or can work – in any sort of un-claustrophobic manner, bewildered by all their dreams coming true overnight.

‘The crowds chasing us in A Hard Day’s Night were based on moments like this. Taken out of the back of our car on West Fifty-Eight, crossing the Avenue of the Americas.’ New York, February 1964 ” height=”1370″ width=”2000″ srcset=”https://static.standard.co.uk/2023/06/26/14/P1964-10-10_DS_cover%2012.54.10.jpg?width=320&auto=webp&quality=100&crop=2000%3A1370%2Csmart 320w, https://www.mecreates.com/story/news/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/P1964-10-10_DS_cover2012.54.10.jpg 640w, https://static.standard.co.uk/2023/06/26/14/P1964-10-10_DS_cover%2012.54.10.jpg?width=960&auto=webp&quality=100&crop=2000%3A1370%2Csmart 960w” layout=”responsive” class=”i-amphtml-layout-responsive i-amphtml-layout-size-defined” i-amphtml-layout=”responsive”>

As Paul switches his film to colour in Miami, a surreal tone sets in. There’s “shy one” George accepting a cocktail from a bikini-clad waitress in the very image of first-generation rock star luxury – an image the 1970s would solo itself senseless trying to emulate – but with the distant expression all four share as they calmly try to fish, swim or lounge on Miami Beach while police hold back baying hordes. The modern pop dynamic is born in these pictures and, coloured by the seismic cultural impact of the era, it’s both humanising and beautiful to watch.

National Portrait Gallery, June 28 to October 1; npg.org.uk

Editor’s Note: Untold Art History investigates lesser-known stories in art, spotlighting unsung and pioneering artists you should know, as well as uncovering new insights into influential artworks that radically shift our understanding of them.

At the turn of the 20th century, the studio run by Norwegian photographers Bolette Berg and Marie Høeg had a secret second purpose. During the day, it operated as a conventional atelier where locals in the coastal town of Horten, Norway, could come have their portraits taken for pocket-sized cartes de visite, the era’s tradeable profile pictures. After hours, though, it became a clandestine gathering space for politically-minded women, as equality movements were burning brightly around the country.

Berg and Høeg lived life on their own terms, both as romantic partners in a time of little LGBTQ visibility and as business partners running a studio and publishing company when women were highly restricted in their careers — and beyond. But decades after their deaths in the 1940s, another radical aspect of their lives resurfaced, tucked away in boxes of glass negatives marked “private”: the couple eschewing traditional gender norms in playful portraits they took of themselves and loved ones.

In the photos, Berg and Høeg dress up in womenswear and menswear, using props and painted backdrops to set their irreverent scenes. In one, Berg dons an oversized fur-lined wool coat, a mustache and spectacles, eyes glimmering with mischief. In another, Høeg and one of Berg’s sisters light cigarettes while sitting in a rowboat; a small dog peeking over the edge.

Bought at auction in the 1970s by the photographer Leif Preus, these personal negatives went unnoticed within his larger collection for years. But since the first exhibition of Berg and Høeg’s work was shown in the mid-1990s, the women have become cult figures in queer art history, and continue to gain wider international acclaim — most recently through the exhibition “Like a Whirlwind” at the major international festival PhotoESPAÑA, on view until August 24 in Madrid.

The couple’s self-portraits are striking because they were captured “in a way that seems so modern,” according to curator Kristin Aasbo, who works at the Preus Museum in Horten and has led research and exhibitions on the pair. (The museum, founded from Preus’ collection in 1976, was later acquired by the Norwegian government and now serves as the country’s national photography museum.) She loves their dynamic, apparent even in their solo portraits, when they are “having fun for the person behind the camera,” she said.

One of Aasbo’s favorite images features the couple in their prop boat, with Høeg ‘rowing’ its oars. It’s one of the only known photographs of the couple posing together.

“Both of them have their hands visible, and you can see there’s a ring on each of their fingers,” Aasbo noted. “It’s almost like a wedding photo, so I’m very fond of that.”

Energizing a town

Though much of Berg and Høeg’s lives remain a mystery, a handful of academics and curators have slowly pieced together some details from newspaper clippings and other documents of the era.

Høeg, who was from a family of fishermen, grew up in the small town of Langesund, and began photographing after traveling with her brother to Finland. It’s believed she met Berg, who was studying photography at the time, while in Finland; they relocated to Horten in 1894 to run their studio. Berg, born in Nannestad, was the daughter of a village priest, and one of six sisters — only one of whom ever married.

Høeg also bucked conventions, with her gender non-conforming style and an inherent magnetism, according to Aasbo. “Marie came to (Horten), this sleepy little town, and she just started making things move,” Aasbo said. “She smoked and she wore trousers — she was a very outgoing and outspoken woman.”

At their studio, Berg & Høeg Fotoatelier, Høeg hosted the intentionally enigmatically named “Discussion Club,” where women in the community learned how to discuss politics during the suffrage movement — they were granted full rights to vote in 1913 — as well as meetings for a group called “the Sanitary Ladies,” which focused on environmental causes.

While at work, Berg and Høeg primarily produced the smaller cartes de visite and larger cardboard-mounted cabinet cards that were popular portrait options of the time. But they closed the business and moved to Oslo in 1903, shifting their focus to printing postcards of landscapes and Norwegian art as the postcard market was booming, as well as publishing books on art and society, including career-focused books for women.

“I see them as businesswomen,” Aasbo explained. “They were conscious about what was in the air at the moment, and then they found their way of life.”

The photographers’ relationship was likely an open secret, according to Aasbo.

“It was quite well known that they were living together as partners, as lovers,” she said. “They lived together their whole lives,” though some may have thought they were simply “best friends forever,” she said with a laugh.

An ongoing search

Exactly where the photographers’ negatives came from is another piece of the puzzle Aasbo is hoping to solve. Their whereabouts during the 30 years between their deaths and the auction in which Preus acquired them remains a question mark, though it’s believed Berg and Høeg left the boxes in their farmhouse in Lunner, where they often vacationed, and were only discovered after the home’s sale, she explained.

In a serendipitous moment, the museum acquired hundreds more of their negatives by accident last year, when they were discovered within a collection of work by the Norwegian photographers (and brothers) Thorvald and August Brunskow. And just like those purchased by Preus, among the batch of negatives was a small “private” box, containing more lively and intimate self-portraits. Altogether, there are now around 700 known negatives of Berg & Høeg’s work, some 80 of which chronicled their “private” lives.

“It was just by chance that we got these,” Aasbo said of the recent acquisition. “It’s almost like there’s something bigger than us that wants us to find more on these ladies.”

The quietly radical images would have likely been controversial during Berg and Høeg’s lifetimes, and are exhibited with that context in mind today. Though some critics online have debated whether the designation “private” meant the photos should have remained out of the public eye, Aasbo has a different interpretation.

“I don’t think that ‘private’ means ‘don’t touch,’ I think that it means that it’s not a part of their business,” she said.

Aasbo is hoping to find more on their lives as their reputation grows. So far, their photographs have only exhibited in Europe, but will debut in the US next year at the gallery Wrightwood 569 in Chicago.

“It would have been wonderful for a diary to be discovered, but I don’t think we’ll find that,” she said “But we have grown so fond of these ladies… They get into your heart.”