Capturing Beatlemania: Sir Paul McCartney photo exhibit coming to SF's de Young Museum
The exhibit debuting in 2025 is called Eyes of the Storm
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Sixty years ago, the Beatles arrived in the Bay Area to kick off their first U.S. concert tour. And the memories of the Fab Four performing before a packed crowd at San Francisco's Cow Palace in August of 1964 are still the stuff that dreams and screams are made of.
And while it's a bit of a hop from the Cow Palace stage to San Francisco's de Young Museum, curator Sally Martin Katz is hoping that same excitement will still echo through in an upcoming photo exhibit. Beatlemania, through the eyes of Sir Paul McCartney.
"So this exhibition covers the period, the three month intense period from December 1963 to February 1964." And so we have a rare opportunity now to see it through McCartney's eyes, to see it from their experience," Katz explains.
MORE: 70 Years of ABC7: Rare behind-the-scenes video of The Beatles visit to San Francisco in 1965
The exhibit is called Eyes of the Storm. Featuring candid photographs, taken by McCartney with his 35-millimeter camera and freshly retrieved from his personal collection. The photos document that mad rush in the year leading up the San Francisco concert.
"I love that the title of the exhibition is called Eyes of the Storm, which really gets at this idea. I mean, the storm that was Beatlemania arriving here in the US, how it took the country by storm, but also this notion of looking, of being eyes and who is looking at who and the direction of gaze is we're used to being the ones looking at them and here he's returning the gaze, looking out at the fans, looking out at the journalists," says Katz.
MORE: 'Bouquets to Art' exhibit at de Young Museum celebrates 40th year in full bloom
And McCartney turns his lens on both journalist and his fellow Beatles. Giving audiences an unfiltered look at the innocent joy and unrelenting pressure of their sudden fame.
"The photographs are on the go. They're blurry. We see a sense of movement. And so, you know, they're not as I said, before, not carefully posed images where he's thinking about composition from a very deliberate perspective. But they do, I think, have a lot of value as works of art in and of themselves, not just as documents of a moment in time," Katz believes.
The photos have been on exhibit in New York, and will arrive at the de Young just before spring, running from March 1 through early July. And perhaps reigniting the excitement that swept the Bay Area so many decades ago.
