Linda McCartney: Behind the Lens at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale

She became famous for marrying a Beatle, but before Linda McCartney met Paul, she snapped a generation of rock stars. Behind the lens, she captured the magic of the ’60s and took candid shots of future stars such as Mick Jagger, Janis Joplin and, of course, the Beatles themselves.

The famous faces that she captured on film will be one of the big attractions of Linda McCartney: Retrospective, the show that will headline the Ballarat International Foto Biennale. It’s a win for the city, the only place in Australia, to host the show.

“We have photographs of some of the most important musicians of our time – at a time when music changed the world, and the world was changed by music,” says artistic director Fiona Sweet. 

Linda Eastman was an award-winning photographer before she met the Beatles. Born in New York in 1941, she became the first woman to shoot a Rolling Stone cover with a portrait of Eric Clapton. 

While working as an editorial assistant at Town & Country magazine in 1966, she picked up an unwanted invitation to a Rolling Stones party. Taking her camera along, her photos of the unguarded rockers on a boat on the Hudson River became instant classics. 

In 1967, she was voted US female photographer of the year and sent to London to photograph the Beatles – and the rest, as they say, is history.

She photographed many iconic stars, including the Doors, the Animals, Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys. She documented the musical and cultural revolution of the ’60s, photographing Jimi Hendrix yawning, Janis Joplin backstage with a whiskey bottle, Aretha Franklin upset and, of course, the launch of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The exhibition will feature more than 200 works and, interestingly, includes 24 Australian images that have never been shown publicly before. The McCartney family toured here with Wings (Paul’s later band in which Linda was a keyboardist) in 1975. 

This retrospective collection was curated by Paul and daughters Mary and Stella McCartney, who found the Australian images in the family archives.

“The Linda McCartney show is an incredible coup for Ballarat,” says Sweet, who spent three years organising it. “What’s most interesting are the intimate and moving portraits of rock and roll photography.”

Linda was also an animal rights activist and vegetarian pioneer. She wrote two cookbooks, launched a range of readymade meals and used her photos to promote various causes.

Over the years, she documented her own family life, capturing poignant photos of Paul and children Heather, Mary, Stella and James. 

Married for 29 years, Linda and Paul had a very close relationship. “You can see the love through the photography, through the films, through the way they raised their children,” Sweet says.

The show will attract photography buffs, music lovers and celebrity fans, she adds.

The exhibition is part of the biennale, which has 200 different shows in various historic buildings, laneways and cafes.

The 2021 Ballarat International Foto Biennale runs from August 28 to October 24. www.ballaratfoto.org