To coincide with the Beatles Week / Mathew Street Festival, Ikonography are exhibiting the work of major photographers and artists from the ‘60’s including Robert Whitaker, Bill Zygmant, Astrid Kircherr, Klaus Voorman and John Lennon.

There are a lot of interesting and familiar (dare I say, iconic) images on display and for sale

The retrospective follows the transformation of the group from their early days in Hamburg through to the psychedelic era. For Beatles’ fans, the exhibition represents a rare opportunity to see the group’s former friends’/photographers’ works all presented together at once.

I called in yesterday and met one of the photographers, Bill Zygmant. He told me this was the first time he had ever exhibited his work. He is often asked to, of course, but he is more interested in just taking good photographs and has always enjoyed the work. He's pictured here in front of some of his photos. You can see plenty more on his website:
www.zygmant.com

Bill Zygmant,
Part-Lithuanian, Bill began his photography career in 1961 when he became a journalistic photographer for the London Evening News by accident. Having discovered a certain talent with a camera, he soon went on to become a freelancer and took pictures of a wide variety of big 60’s names including Lennon, Hendrix and Bolan. Bill’s work will be a major feature of the exhibition.

Robert Whitaker
Part -Australian, Whitaker was born in this country but moved to Melbourne in 1961 to go to university and became friends with major figures in the Australian art world. He met The Beatles in 1964 when they toured Australia and Brian Epstein offered him a job as a staff photographer. Some of his most famous work includes the ‘Butcher’s Sleeve’ picture that was used on an LP cover released in the U.S. that had to be withdrawn due to complaints. He is famous for having said “There were about 100 people who ran the Sixties.” Whitaker seems to have either photographed or hung out with most of them. A lot of his own work and his own private collection of work was featured in last year’s ‘Summer of Love’ exhibition at Tate Liverpool due to his key involvement with a wide variety of artists, musicians and writers during the whole psychedelic era.

Astrid Kircherr and Klaus Voorman
Astrid and Klaus were both German art students who met The Beatles when they were working in Hamburg. Astrid became engaged to band member Stuart Sutcliffe who subsequently left the group. She later went on to become a freelance photographer.
Klaus Voorman was initially an artist but also turned out to be something of a musician himself. He followed The Beatles to London and ended up joining the band Manfred Mann. He designed the album cover for their LP ‘Revolver’ but turned increasingly towards the musical side of his career and became a session artist, eventually moving to the U.S.

At Ikonography until Wednesday August 30th 2006