The wives of great men are so often cast in a supporting role, their lives dedicated to helping their spouses from the wings of the world stage.
Not so Linda McCartney, whose creativity and artistic flair was central to the relationship with her husband and Beatle Paul.
This is one of the many takeaways from the Walker Art Gallery‘s retrospective of her extraordinary photography, which opens in Liverpool tomorrow.
The collection of more than 250 black and white bromide prints, colour C-types, Polaroids, cyanotypes and contact sheets demonstrates not only what a talent she was in her own right, but how this first attracted Paul McCartney and was central to their marriage until her death in 1998.
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Sarah Brown, photographic curator of the Linda McCartney Archive, says: “She was very much a photographer before she met Paul, and that’s how she met him while on assignment to London.
“She wasn’t meeting these bands because of him. It was because of her work as a photographer and her amazing eye.
“It seems he always supported it. She was given so much creative space. To this day he’s pushing Linda’s legacy to get the great recognition she deserves.”
An art history graduate, Linda got into photography almost by accident when accompanying a friend to a class in Arizona. The instructor, Hazel Archer, had herself studied with Bauhaus painter Josef Albers and her teaching influenced many major 20th century artists.
Sarah says: “Instead of saying ‘this is how you take a photo’, Hazel showed the class different great American photographers. Linda was just blown away by how photography could be its own art form and could bring so much humanity and emotion in one image.”
Particularly struck by Walker Evans’ and Dorothea Lange’s deeply human pictures of the 1930s Great Depression, she went straight out with a camera and snapped some shots. Archer was impressed and, despite not continuing with the lessons, Linda was hooked on photography for life.
Her big break came in 1966 when, working as an editorial assistant for Town and Country magazine, she talked herself on to a press photo shoot with the up-and-coming band The Rolling Stones on a boat on the Hudson River in New York.
The result was a relaxed, unposed portrait of Brian Jones and Mick Jagger, very much unlike the style of image usually seen.
Sarah says: “Apparently she was really easy to be around and be photographed by and that’s why you get such intimacy and unguarded moments.
“One thing the family always talks about is that she was never looking for manicured scenes, she wasn’t trying to manipulate the world around her to get that perfect shot. She would have an eye for it there and then and would then put her camera back down.”
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When shooting images for a commission, she would often spend an entire day with her subject, snapping candid moments as they happened.
At other times, such as during The Beatles‘ recording sessions at Abbey Road Studios, she would act like a fly on the wall, unnoticed by the four musicians as they worked on their next album.
One of the most intimate images in the exhibition – and there are many – shows John Lennon and Paul McCartney pouring over a white sheet of paper, smiling together as they write a song for the White Album. Paul himself has described the picture as “a blessing”. He said: “It sums up what our relationship was like the minute we were actually working on a song.”
Although she initially favoured black and white photography, Linda also used colour as well as experimenting with the instantaneous nature of Polaroids and the cyanotype process of using sunlight to print images. Her family believes if she had lived into the 21st century, she would have been eager to embrace digital.
Sarah says: “Mary said she probably would embrace it because she wasn’t pretentious or a snob, and she would probably find a lot of freedom in it and be doing it alongside her 35mm photography. She’d probably like how instant everything is because she loved the Polaroid for that.”
Linda’s subject matter also shifted as her life changed. As magazines demanded specific shots, making her job less creative, she moved into taking photos of her family and animal rights activism, as reflected in the retrospective.
Her pictures of life at home with Paul and their children show her democratic approach to photography – you didn’t have to be a celebrity to be worthy of being framed by her lens, says Sarah.
Linda favoured natural light for her pictures and framed them as she took them. The images on her negatives are exactly the same composition as her finished items. When you look at a Linda McCartney photograph it is like looking through her eyes.
As his home city, Liverpool was of course top of the list when Paul and Sarah discussed where in the UK he wanted to tour the exhibition.
And to make it a bit special for his fellow Scousers, they have included a section of never before seen pictures Linda took in Merseyside, on visits to see Paul’s dad Jim McCartney and brother Mike. A contact sheet of pictures she took in Wirral is one of two taken out of the archive for the Liverpool show – the other is a series of Frank Zappa.
But in the end the lens always returns to Paul. From a selfie of the couple in a mirror – Paul cheekily posing with a camera – to him snuggling baby Mary inside his sheepskin coat, each image evokes the huge sense of fun and mutual respect that drove their relationship.
Linda McCartney Retrospective is at the Walker Art Gallery from Saturday until November 1, 2020. Tickets, priced £9 adults with concessions available, must be prebooked here.
Martin A Nethercutt is a writer, singer, producer and loves music.
Creative Director at McCartney Studios
Editor-in-Chief at McCartney Times
Creator-in-Chief at Geist Musik
President (title) at McCartney Multimedia, Inc.
Went to Albert-Schweitzer-Schule Kassel
Lives in Playa del Rey
From Kassel, Germany
Married to Ruth McCartney
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