Linda McCartney - Photography

Photography

McCartney started work as a receptionist for the Town & Country magazine, and was the only unofficial photographer on board the SS Sea Panther yacht on the Hudson River who was allowed to take photographs of The Rolling Stones during a record promotion party. Although she had previously only studied the photography of horses in Arizona at an arts centre with a teacher, Hazel Archer, she was later asked to be the house photographer at the Fillmore East concert hall, and supposedly became a popular groupie. She photographed artists such as Aretha Franklin, Grace Slick, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Eric Clapton, Simon & Garfunkel, The Who, The Doors, The Animals, John Lennon, and Neil Young. She photographed Young in 1967—the picture was used for the front cover of Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968, in 2008.

She photographed Clapton for Rolling Stone magazine, becoming the first woman to have a photo featured on the front cover (11 May 1968). She and McCartney also appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone on 31 January 1974, making her the only person both to have taken a photo, and to have been photographed, for the front cover of the magazine. Her photographs were later exhibited in more than 50 galleries internationally, as well as at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. A collection of photographs from that time, Linda McCartney's Sixties: Portrait of an Era, was published in 1993. She also took the photograph for the cover of McCartney and Michael Jackson's single, "The Girl Is Mine".