Linda McCartney’s life through the lens subject of major exhibition

Opening on July 5, the Linda McCartney Retrospective at Kelvingrove includes portraits of music icons such as The Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin, nature studies, reportage pieces, experimental works and shots taken on her family farm in Kintyre, Argyll and Bute.

The extensive exhibition features more than 200 printed items and spans McCartney’s life in pictures from the 1960s to pictures taken in the months up to her death from breast cancer in April 1998.

McCartney got her first major break in professional photography while working as an editorial assistant at US lifestyle magazine Town And Country.

Using an unwanted invitation to a Rolling Stones promo party on the Hudson River, her naturalistic images of the rock stars were a subsequent success.

In 1967 she was voted US Female Photographer of the Year and in 1968 her portrait of Eric Clapton made her the first female photographer to take the cover image of Rolling Stone magazine.

On assignment to cover swinging London’s cultural scene, she shot The Beatles at manager Brian Epstein’s Belgravia pad for the launch of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

A year later she and Paul McCartney began their 29 years of marriage.

As their family grew and The Beatles began to fall apart, the McCartneys retreated to High Park Farm in rural Kintyre.

Instead of glamorous musicians, Linda’s work became personal and even more sensitive, depicting family life and their farm animals, people from local communities in Campbeltown and the landscapes of Kintyre.

Whatever the subject, the vast collection on display at Kelvingrove is obviously the work of a single artist, says Fiona Hayes, curator of social history at Glasgow Life.

Hayes has stewarded the Kelvingrove hanging of the retrospective, which is curated by Paul and two of their daughters: photographer and vegetarian cookery writer Mary, born in 1969, and fashion designer Stella, born in 1971.

“It’s obvious she was always very in tune with the people she was photographing,” says Hayes. “She was known for really putting people at ease to make these really powerful portraits. Seeing all her work up on the walls, you do get that sense of connection, that same point of view.

“When she was starting out in the sixties, a lot of the people she was photographing, like Jimi Hendrix, were starting their careers too, and she was known for putting people at ease.

Hayes adds: “Though there’s quite a range of subjects, you know it comes from the same artist. She had this great capacity for empathy.”

One photograph shows Paul looking into the rear-view mirror of the McCartney’s car. Titled My Love, Linda shot the tender portrait from the backseat.

“With his expression, that intimacy, you really become invested in what’s happening,” says Hayes. “There’s this delight in the world around us and she had an ability to pick up on details of everyday life, those moments where something special could happen.”

Those qualities are even found in McCartney’s more experimental works, Hayes says, such as her series of deep blue cyanotype prints, a tribute to 19th-century photographic pioneer William Henry Fox.

McCartney came to photography by accident. She had first been introduced to Fox’s work, as well as that of classic US photographers Walker Evans, Edward Weston and Dorothea Lange – she of the arresting images of anxiety-stricken migrant workers during the Depression – during an evening class taken while at the University of Arizona in the early 1960s.

When the class were given a practical assignment, the young Linda Eastman had to go out and purchase a camera. She’d gone to the class not with an intention of learning to be a photographer, but simply to give moral support to a friend.

“Linda then went out and photographed what was around her,” says Hayes. “She had a real connection with the natural world. She’s also said in the past that she came from a very visual family, but I think it was the act of having the camera and looking through the lens and framing things, details, that really struck a chord with her.

“The way she looked at the world, she would pick up on details that might otherwise have been overlooked. She makes the viewer look again at the world around them.”

The exhibition features some of Linda’s cameras and photographic equipment, as well as materials from her archives such as vintage magazines and a work diary from the 1960s shown in public for the first time.

Also displayed is a diary from 1970, with the word “Scotland” scrawled over two pages.

“It sums up what Scotland meant to her family,” says Hayes. “It’s about how excited she was to come up to the farm at Campbeltown. She has said she loved being in Scotland. We have some pictures of Paul in Glasgow in the 1960s to landscapes, horses and standing stones taken in Scotland towards the end of her life. You get the feeling that Scotland runs throughout her life.”

The quantity and range of material reflects the McCartney family’s enthusiasm for increased access to Linda’s work.

First show in Vienna, the six-month exhibition at Kelvingrove is its first showing in the UK, with Sir Paul saying how “Linda would have been so proud of this exhibition being held in Scotland, a country she loved so much and spent so many happy days in”.

“Through these images you meet the real mother I knew,” says Stella. “You see her raw and deep talent and passion for her art, photography.

“Ahead of her time on every level this mother-of-four still held her camera close like a companion, she captured the world around her through her eyes and this can be seen on the walls around the exhibition.”

The fashion designer continues: “Her humour, her love of family and nature and her moments are framed with a slight surreal edge. Scotland was one of her favourite places on earth, and so many images were taken there. Enjoy her passion and compassion.”

July 5 to January 12, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, 10am to 5pm, Fridays and Sundays 11am to 5pm, £7, £5 concs. 0141 353 8000.

www.glasgowlife.org.uk www.glasgowmuseums.com