Paul McCartney’s backstage photographs of Beatlemania, formerly presumed lost, will go on show in London

In 1963, The Beatles hit a sharp career trajectory. Their first UK tour as headliners, prestigious television appearances and a residency in Paris accelerated the band into the stratosphere, highlights of a time which saw the coining of the term ‘Beatlemania’.

On the 35mm Pentax camera acquired that same year, Paul McCartney captured it all. The photographs from the unique period between December 1963 and early February 1964, which will be on show at London’s Gagosian gallery, are a mix of multi-image works and single frames, remastered from the original negatives and contact sheets, which for fifty years have been presumed lost. Now brought back to life, they have each been signed by McCartney and presented in a frame of his design.

McCartney photographed the band in the weeks before they made their first visit to America. The Beatles were on tour around the UK, here seen in backstage shots from Finsbury Park Astoria, the Lewisham and London Palladium. They headed to Paris for a three-week residency at the Olympia Theatre and appeared on the Beatles Christmas Show and BBC’s Juke Box Jury programme, the latter which was watched by 23 million people.

Alongside downtime between shows, McCartney includes a self-portrait, where we glimpse him reflected in the mirror of the attic room of the London family home of his then-girlfriend, Jane Asher. It is an intimate insight which runs parallel with the band’s burgeoning public profile. Poignantly, the series concludes with the band preparing for their Pan Am flight to New York in February 1964, poised on the cusp of international superstardom.

Rearview Mirror: Liverpool–London–Paris opens at Gagosian Davies Street on August 28