Photo shoot with Richard Avedon

In January 1965, American photographer Richard Avedon met The Beatles at the Ad Lib club in London while visiting the city for an assignment for the magazine Harper’s Bazaar.

On this day, January 26, Avedon photographed Paul McCartney at a studio in Thompson House, 200 Gray’s Inn Road, London. For this session, Paul was dressed as an astronaut, and several shots included English model and actress Jean Shrimpton. One of the resulting portraits was later published in the April 1965 issue of Harper’s Bazaar.

As a sophisticated New Yorker, [Richard Avedon’s] interest in the arts was broad and far from superficial. The range of artists, performers, and writers he gathered for the April 1965 issue [of Harper’s Bazaar] fills a decidedly Pop but still idiosyncratic time capsule. Models in silvery space suits (courtesy NASA) share the editorial pages with Avedon’s portraits of Bob Dylan, Robert Rauschenberg, Paul McCartney, Jasper Johns, and Ringo Starr. A model in a negligee perches atop the bureau in Claes Oldenburgs Bedroom Ensemble, and work by Roy Lichtenstein, George Segal, and Stan VanDerBeek crops up between photos of dancers “fragging the fat away” and a portfolio of young London couples in modified Mod gear. Like the source images for most of Andy Warhol’s silkscreen portraits, the photos on the contributors’ page were all taken in photobooths. The issue was a bold exclamation point — exuberant, celebratory, playful — at once knowing and agog.

From “Avedon fashion” by Richard Avedon, 2009

Three days later, on January 29, 1965, Richard Avedon photographed Ringo Starr at the same Thompson House studio. In this portrait, Ringo wore a laurel wreath, evoking the image of a Roman emperor. The photograph was first published in the Daily Mirror on May 12, 1965, accompanied by the headline “Hail, Ringo.”

Richard Avedon would later photograph all four Beatles on August 11, 1967, once again at Thompson House. The group returned to the same studio on July 28, 1968, for the first stop of their Mad Day Out photo session.

Going further

The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years

With greatly expanded text, this is the most revealing and frank personal 30-year chronicle of the group ever written. Insider Barry Miles covers the Beatles story from childhood to the break-up of the group.

Buy on Amazon