LINDA McCARTNEYRETROSPECTIVE

Curated by members of the McCartney family, this exhibition covers Linda McCartney’s whole photographic career, from 1965 to 1997. Thirty years which bore witness to the evolution of pop and youth culture as we know it.

Linda’s early portraits of the burgeoning New York 1960s music scene capture the vulnerability of future worldconquering rock stars. Moving to London with her new husband Paul in 1969, Linda had a uniquely intimate visual perspective on the biggest band in the world.

Into the late 1960s and 1970s Linda, with a young family, began to document her extraordinary version of domestic life: as a mother and herself a founding member of Wings. No longer on the road and with the time to experiment, Linda’s later work conveys the stillness, patience and wisdom of a grown-up counterculturalist.

The emotional spontaneity and ease in this work prefigures how we all take pictures now: capturing images of when our lives are, in that moment, exactly how we want them to be.

LINDA McCARTNEY RETROSPECTIVE

Linda Louise McCartney was born in Scarsdale, New York, on 24th September 1941. She graduated from Scarsdale High School, New York in 1960 and studied at the University of Arizona, majoring in Art History.

Linda became a professional photographer in the mid-1960s, known for her portraits of Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, among many others. In 1968 she was the first female photographer to grace the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, with a portrait of Eric Clapton. In 1974, when Linda and Paul appeared on Rolling Stone’s cover, she became the first person to have been photographed and taken a photo for the cover of the magazine: a neat reflection of Linda’s life both in front of and behind the lens.

Following her marriage to Paul McCartney in 1969, Linda’s photographs became more intimate and emotional, exploring the natural world and family life.

In her parallel career as a musician Linda received credits on her duet album with Paul, RAM (1971). She joined her husband on stage as a keyboard player and vocalist in Wings throughout the 1970s. In the 1990s Linda’s two vegetarian cookbooks, Linda McCartney’s Home Cooking and Linda’s Kitchen, became international bestsellers and she is widely known for revolutionizing vegetarian home cooking with her company Linda McCartney Foods.

Linda continued to work prolifically as a photographer until her death from breast cancer in 1998. Her work has been exhibited by institutions including the International Center of Photography in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London.

BIOGRAPHY

The basis of this retrospective is the work selected by Paul, Mary and Stella McCartney for Linda’s 2011 book Life in Photographs and the accompanying exhibitions at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, and the Philips de Pury Gallery in London.

The exhibition in its current form, curated by the McCartneys, was first shown at Kunst Haus Wien followed by two more successful shows at The Pavillon Populaire in Montpellier and the Daelim Museum in Seoul.

The exhibition comprises:

8 enlarged contact sheet reproductions

89 black and white bromide prints

18 black and white platinum prints

56 colour C-type prints

2 black and white C-type prints

60 Polaroids reproduced as colour c-type prints

10 blue Cyanotypes

5 colour Polaroid transfer prints

A mixture of new and vintage prints, including 17 prints signed by Linda McCartney. Books and related films also available as part of the exhibition.

The Sixties

Family Life

Self Portraits

Observations/Moments

Later Work

Polaroids

Contact Sheets

THE WORK

CONTACT DETAILS

For all enquiries please contact Sarah Brown at Linda Enterprises Ltd sbrown@mpl.co.uk +44 207 439 2001