Before marrying a Beatle, becoming a mother of four, a key member of the band Wings, an animal rights activist, and a vegetarian food entrepreneur and cookbook author, Linda McCartney (1941-1998) was a photographer.
On 25 September 2026, Wrensilva Los Angeles – the audio company’s West Hollywood showroom and listening space – will unveil to the public ‘The Art of the Album: The Photography of Linda McCartney’, presented in conjunction with The Linda McCartney Archive LLP, and MPL Communications. This date will also see the US Postal Service honour McCartney’s extraordinary life with a limited-edition stamp series.
Photography connected with all facets of McCartney’s career and life. The images on display at Wrensilva were used on album covers, and while many were the result of official commissions from record labels, some were personal snapshots.
This is the only exhibition in the US currently devoted solely to McCartney's music photography. Running through February 2027, it pairs her photographs with the vinyl records that immortalised them, alongside a Wrensilva console where you can play music from that era, including The Beatles, The Cimarons, Denny Laine, Paul McCartney, The Pretenders, Professor Longhair, and Neil Young.
Chrissie Hynde on the cover of The Pretenders’ ¡Viva El Amor! (1999)
This is the fourth exhibition for Wrensilva Presents: The Art of the Album. Each one pairs a photographer's work with the respective record covers and vinyl. ‘The idea is to bring people into the creative journey that surrounds the music,’ says Greg Perlot, CEO of Wrensilva. ‘Essentially, [it’s] seeing the genesis of an album cover through the photographer’s lens, what they saw, and then what ultimately became the finished album cover we know and love. For this chapter, we wanted a photographer whose work went beyond enhancing a recording. Mrs McCartney’s unique style helped define what an album cover could be. We brought the concept to the MPL Communications team, and they gave us the chance to do it. We hope this offers people a chance to see her photography in person and experience it in a new way by hearing the albums that feature her iconic work.’
As for a few of Perlot’s standouts in the show, ‘The first is the cover of Paul's 1970 solo record, McCartney, shot during a family holiday in Antigua in 1969. It's the hero image of the installation, and we're presenting it three ways: as a framed print, scaled up into wallpaper on one wall, and reproduced as the commemorative poster.
‘The second is Professor Longhair's Live on the Queen Mary. Paul and Linda met him in New Orleans, while Wings were recording Venus and Mars. When the sessions wrapped, they threw a party aboard the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach and brought him in to play. Nobody released that performance for three years, until Paul put it out in 1978 as its own record, with Linda's photograph of [Professor Longhair] on the cover.’
Vinyl albums on display beside a Wrensilva console in the West Hollywood showroom
What it took to document these historical snapshots is the stuff of legendary music lore. According to Perlot, Linda put it best herself: ‘Most people, if I like their music, I can get good pictures.’
‘Most of the people she photographed were already in her circle,’ he says, ‘not assignments she was sent to cover. And sometimes [these] were portraits that hinted at a crack in the mask of rock-star grandeur.
‘Some of these photographs became the cover,’ adds Perlot. ‘Some lived quietly inside the sleeve, found only by the listener who opened it. Some were taken in the middle of the work, before the album had a shape. She photographed people as she found them, not as they performed for the lens.’
Linda McCartney was born Linda Eastman, in Scarsdale, New York in 1941. After attending Sarah Lawrence College, she studied art under Hazel Larsen Archer in Arizona. Using a Leica camera, she landed her first big gig with Town & Country in the mid-1960s, photographing musicians and entertainers, and became a regular at Bill Graham's Fillmore East New York concert venue. Here she shot the most magnetic performers of the day from Aretha Franklin to Bob Dylan, John Lennon, the Who, and the Animals. Over the years, she perfected her craft and shot legends such as Jimmy Hendrix, and The Rolling Stones on a yacht, and finally, she had that fateful backstage pass to shoot The Beatles at Shea Stadium in 1965.
The cover of Paul McCartney’s solo album McCartney (1970), right, and associated photographs
Rather than set up structured photo shoots, McCartney was a fly on the wall and used a more organic approach to capturing her subjects; she said at the time, ‘Suddenly I found that taking pictures was a great way to live and a great way to work.’ Nothing was contrived and McCartney didn’t direct her subjects, but easily captured some of the most famous musicians of her generation in an unguarded fashion when they were on tour, in hotels, or at home, the images sometimes ending up as cover art for albums. In 1967, her photo of Neil Young appeared on the cover of Sugar Mountain – Live at Canterbury House, 1968. Later in her career, she would take the photograph for the cover of Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson’s single The Girl Is Mine (1982).
Her unique style and soaring reputation led her to become the first woman to photograph a Rolling Stone magazine cover, in 1968, featuring Eric Clapton. Later, she appeared on the cover herself, alongside Paul, in a 1974 issue (photographed by Francesco Scavullo).
Among McCartney’s favourite subjects to photograph were her family and animals. Her photographs have been exhibited throughout the United States as well as at the Royal Photographic Society and the Victoria & Albert Museum in the UK. A collection of photographs, Linda McCartney’s Sixties: Portrait of an Era, was published in 1992.
As for her latest posthumous legacy, the limited-edition US stamp collection features a pane of 20 stamps showcasing five different photographs. The selvage features a black-and-white self-portrait of McCartney behind her camera. Derry Noyes, an art director for USPS, designed the stamps and stamp pane. There will be a first-day-of-issue ceremony for stamps featuring her photography at MoMA in New York City on 25 September 2026.
Wrensilva | Los Angeles, 8625 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood, CA 90069.
On view through February 2027. Gallery hours: Monday – Saturday, 11am-6pm
wrensilva.com