“I’m into Life.”
John and Yoko in the McCartney’s London Living Room, 1969.
Our house has been consumed by The Beatles since Get Back was released last fall. In truth, our house has always been consumed by The Beatles in some form or fashion, our dog’s name is Ringo, to give just one example; but Get Back opened a door behind a door that we can’t, and, at this point, don’t want to escape out of. As we watched the fascinating, and frustrating, process of The Beatles’ deceivingly simple creative process my husband began to go through doors of B-Sides and solo albums (Paul’s, in particular) and I began to crack open coffee table books that had laid dormant in our entertainment center. I was particularly called to read Linda McCartney’s Sixties: Portraits of an Era, a book I had picked up from the sales cart at Farewell Books years ago. A totem to a now-closed book store and a time in our lives where we would aimlessly stroll the stores downtown after brunch with our friends and see what kind of goodies we could take home.
I read this book over a couple of days and couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to become so intimately involved with so many timeless artists. To have the ability to capture a part of their soul, their passion, their flaws, in a way that felt authentic and real. This intimacy was achieved, as I learned, from her decision to shoot primarily everything in the moment and never use flash or a professional studio. Everything she captured was in its natural setting, in its natural light, and the ease from these settings beams up from her photos. Regardless of the subject, it’s clear that McCartney was able to establish a friendly, welcome vibration that allowed them to open up and create a magical moment. One magic story that particularly struck me was reading that Jeff Buckley loved the photo Linda took of his dad, Tim (above), that he had it displayed in his bedroom. A story at once both tragic and sweet.
Learning that she had not been professionally trained, and primarily focused on photographing her family and friends (who just happened to be world-famous musicians), moved me in a way I hadn’t expected. There is a delicate line we walk in our current social media landscape, straddling the line of being authentic but also palatable so that our flaws don’t scare people away but make us relatable. It feels like an impossible task, and yet, here is a reminder that there is beauty in the tiny moments. Moments that make our days and happen without design or preconception in mind - but that we must be present for in order to recognize the brief time they appear before us.
This presence purveys throughout all of her work but is especially seen in her family polaroids. The tiny captures of magic in the mundane, in a life full of love and family and mess. This celebration of love is so prevalent in both Linda’s photos and Paul’s solo albums and I think it’s what continues to keep us in this Beatles/McCartney obsession we’re in. Their work is our life reflected back to us. We see ourselves in photos of bathtime and songs about family coming over to visit, in a simple moment with a friend on a sidewalk.
As I walk around in their familiar landscape I can’t help being reminded of Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You that asks the question, “What if the meaning of life on Earth is not eternal progress toward some unspecified goal…[but] just to live and be with other people?” After so much loss and upheaval we have collectively gone through these last two years, and if things are only going to get worse from here, why not focus on the blessings of these small moments?
Linda McCartney echoes these sentiments and ends her Sixties book with the line, “I’m into nature and the seasons and blossoms and snowflakes, and I’m not keen to follow the line that everyone else is following. I’m into Life.”
To view more of Linda’s work, please visit her website or check out a Tumblr dedicated to her photography.