The Beatles' Photographer, Robert Whitaker, Has Died

.

The Beatles

Robert Whitaker

.

.

Portrait of the artists:

Another image of the Fab Four taken by Whitaker

.

.

Light moment:

Ringo Starr relaxes at a hotel in Germany

.

.

Different viewpoint:

John Lennon pictured backstage in Japan in 1966.

The Beatles enjoyed working with Whitaker because of his unorthodox, experimental approach to photography

.

.

Candid moment:

Whitaker was able to take behind-the-scenes shots of The Beatles.

Here the band are seen relaxing on a flight from Hong Kong to Manila during their 1966 world tour.

Pictured clockwise from left are George Harrison, manager Brian Epstein, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and chauffeur Alf Bicknell.

.

.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044394/Robert-Whitaker-dies-Beatles-pho...

Mail Online...

.

Robert Whitaker, the photographer who captured iconic Beatles images, dies aged 71

By Gareth Finighan

Last updated at 11:18 PM on 2nd October 2011

Dream job: Photographer Robert Whitaker spent two years working with The Beatles

.

The photographer who shot some of the most famous images of The Beatles and other stars of the 1960s has died at the age of 71.

Robert Whitaker died on September 20 in Sussex after a long battle against cancer.

Whitaker took scores of well-known pictures of The Beatles at the height of their fame, including the controversial 'butcher' cover of the band's 1966 American album Yesterday And Today.

The image of the Fab Four in white coats surrounded by decapitated dolls and slabs of raw meat proved too strong for record company Capitol, which ordered the cover withdrawn soon after the album's release.

The record was re-released with an inoffensive picture of the band sitting on a steamer trunk. Originals are coveted by collectors and can sell for thousands of pounds.

Whitaker - a fan of surrealism - later said the image was a meditation on fame and an attempt to shake up the band's image, inspired by a dream 'about The Beatles being ripped to shreds by all these young girls when they came out of a stadium'.

'All over the world I’d watched people worshipping them like idols, like gods. I was simply trying to show the Beatles were flesh and blood,' he later revealed.

Born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire in 1939, Whitaker emigrated to Australia in his early 20s and was working as a photographer in Melbourne when The Beatles visited the country in 1964.

He was assigned to photograph manager Brian Epstein for the Jewish News. Epstein was so impressed with the resulting image of himself adorned with peacock feathers that he offered Whitaker a job as staff photographer for his company, NEMS.

The job involved photographing Merseybeat acts including Cilla Black and Gerry And The Pacemakers for more than two years at a time when British popular music was dominating the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

But the highlight of the contract was to cover The Beatles - onstage, backstage, in planes and hotel rooms and all manner of locations. He was commissioned to work on the band's final world tour in 1966 and took the pictures used on the collage-style cover of the Revolver album.

After parting company with The Beatles, Whitaker photographed Rolling Stone lead singer Mick Jagger on the sets of the films Performance and Ned Kelly, helped create the psychedelic cover for Cream's Disraeli Gears album cover, and worked on the influential underground magazine Oz.

Increasingly wary of being pigeonholed as a pop photographer, Whitaker later moved into news, covering the Vietnam War and other conflicts for publications including Time and Life. He also spent time photographing his artistic hero, Salvador Dali.

In the 1970s he moved to the English countryside, where he farmed and raised cattle.

Whitaker compiled several books of his Beatles photographs, including The Unseen Beatles and Eight Days A Week.

He is survived by his wife, Sue, and three children.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044394/Robert-Whitaker-dies-Beatles-pho...

.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044394/Robert-Whitaker-dies-Beatles-pho...

.

.

Robert Whitaker/Getty Images

Mr. Whitaker's portrait of John Lennon

.

.

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Mr. Whitaker's photograph of the Beatles on the album cover of “Yesterday and Today.”

.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/arts/robert-whitaker-the-beatles-photographer-...

.

The New York Times...

.

.

October 1, 2011
Robert Whitaker, the Beatles’ Photographer, Dies at 71

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

.

Robert Whitaker photographed the Beatles, Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger, and wars from Vietnam to the Middle East. He aimed his camera up Salvador Dali’s nostrils in search of a surrealist effect. His pictures were displayed at Britain’s National Portrait Gallery.

But his most talked-about work was one that most people never got to see when it was released: a photograph of the Beatles on an album cover that was quickly pulled from public view. Known in Beatles lore as the “butcher cover,” it showed the Beatles, wearing white butchers’ coats, festooned with chunks of raw meat and dismembered dolls. John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are smiling; Paul McCartney’s mouth is agape.

The album, “Yesterday and Today,” went on sale in selected stores a few days before it was to be officially released by Capitol Records, on June 15, 1966. But the day before the planned release, Capitol recalled the record in the face of distributors’ protests that the cover was in bad taste.

Definite numbers are hard to come by, but hundreds of thousands of copies seem to have been recalled. Some 25,000 may have been sold. The cover photo was replaced by another by Mr. Whitaker, the group’s official photographer, showing the Beatles clustered around an upright opened steamer trunk.

Mr. Whitaker, who died on Sept. 20 at 71, had said that the idea for the photograph was entirely his, though he was never consistent in explaining it. Sometimes he said he was not sure why he had posed the Beatles that way; other times he said the butcher theme was meant to suggest that the Beatles, so worshipped by their fans, were real flesh-and-blood people. On another occasion he said the image was to be one of three that would tell a story.

The album itself was a compilation, offering songs, like “Yesterday,” from previous albums and others, like “I’m Only Sleeping” and “And Your Bird Can Sing,” from the coming album “Revolver.” It was the only Beatles record to lose money for Capitol. Still, it rose to No. 1 on the music charts by July 30 and stayed there for five weeks. But for many Beatles’ fans, the hodgepodge nature of the album made the cover the most compelling thing.

The album came at a pivotal point in the Beatles’ career, however, midway between their first No. 1 record and their breakup. Many saw the cover picture as a reflection of a new attitude and image: more willing to expand artistically and court controversy, no longer the floppy-haired Fab Four. A few months earlier there was an outcry over John Lennon’s remark that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, and two months later the band played its last scheduled concert.

Reports in the British press, quoting Dave Brolan, a friend and photo-archivist, said Mr. Whitaker died of cancer in West Sussex, England.

In addition to photographing events like the Beatles’ 1965 Shea Stadium concert, Mr. Whitaker captured them in private moments. One was of John Lennon with a dandelion covering an eye. Mr. Whitaker’s pictures were used in “Revolver’s” cover design. He also photographed Gerry and the Pacemakers and other stars handled by the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein.

Mr. Whitaker photographed much of the London scene of the 1960s and early ’70s, including Carnaby Street fashions. He made pictures of Mick Jagger as a movie actor, and helped create the cover of Cream’s “Disraeli Gears,” the group’s breakthrough album in the United States in 1967. He also contributed to early editions of the countercultural magazine “Oz,” including a collage depicting a woman on a toilet flying over the Houses of Parliament.

Mr. Whitaker turned to war photography in the 1970s, covering conflicts in Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh and the Middle East. He was wounded by a grenade in Vietnam. He gave up professional photography after his wife, Sue, was nearly killed in Syria by a rocket in 1972. She, a daughter and two sons survive him.

Robert Whitaker was born on Nov. 13, 1939, in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England. At 16, he cut up a book about Dali to make collages, which he then sent to the artist. Three decades later, he met with Dali to try “to get inside his head,” as he put it, by aiming his camera into his ears, mouth and nose. (In 2007, he published the pictures in a book, “In the Company of Dali.”)

In 1961, Mr. Whitaker moved to Australia, where he owned a studio and shot fashion photos for the Australian edition of Vogue. When the Beatles toured Australia in 1964, he accompanied a journalist friend to interview Mr. Epstein. Deciding Mr. Epstein resembled a Roman emperor, Mr. Whitaker composed a regal photograph of him. Mr. Epstein liked it and introduced him to the Beatles, who soon made him their official photographer.

After giving up photography, Mr. Whitaker and his wife bought a farm in England, growing crops and raising cattle. He stored his photographs in a chicken shed. After he was injured in a car accident in 1987, he began cataloging the pictures and ultimately published them in books and showed them at exhibitions, including one at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Pristine, unopened copies of the original Beatles “butcher” album, originally priced at $2.99, have sold for more than $20,000. Mr. Whitaker said he never owned one.

.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/10/02/arts/dogWHITAKER1-obit/dogWHITAKE...

.