Beatles photographer Robert Freeman dies
Robert Freeman, who helped define the image of the Beatles by taking the cover photographs for five of their early albums, including “With the Beatles” and “Rubber Soul,” died Wednesday in a hospital in London. He was 82.
His former wife Tiddy Rowan said the cause was pneumonia.
Freeman’s association with the Beatles was relatively brief — about three years — but memorable. He shot his first album cover for them in 1963 as their popularity was soaring, then joined them in 1964 on their tour of the United States; he photographed his last in late 1965, for “Rubber Soul,” which drew attention for its distorted picture.
That image was a twist on the standard group shot.
Freeman was projecting slides from his photo shoot onto an album-size piece of cardboard propped on a table. When the cardboard tilted backward, the effect was a fisheye version of the band’s faces. John Lennon dominated the picture “like some cruelly impassive, suede-collared Tartar prince,” Philip Norman wrote in “John Lennon: The Life” (2008).
The band loved it. As Paul McCartney recalled on his website after Freeman’s death, “He assured us that it was possible to print it this way and because the album was titled ‘Rubber Soul’ we felt that the image fitted perfectly.”
Another sort of serendipity led to Freeman’s cover photograph of the British release “With the Beatles” in August 1963, his first work with the group.
He had not been a photographer for long, but his portraits of jazz musicians like John Coltrane for The Sunday Times of London and other publications had impressed Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager. Epstein asked Freeman to come to Eastbourne, England, to shoot the cover of their second album.
The conditions were ideal. Light from the windows on one side of a hotel dining room left their faces partly in shadows. A maroon curtain created a dark background behind them.
“They came down at midday wearing their black polo-necked sweaters,” Freeman wrote in his book “The Beatles: A Private View” (2003). “It seemed natural to photograph them in blackand-white wearing their customary dark clothes. It gave unity to the image. There was no makeup, hairdresser or stylist — just myself, the Beatles and a camera.”
The same picture, but with a bluish tint, appeared early the next year on the U.S. release of “Meet the Beatles,” which had many of the same songs as “With the Beatles.”
“I think it took no more than half an hour to accomplish,” he wrote.
The cover of the album “A Hard Day’s Night” was distinguished by Freeman’s photographs of each Beatle, one row above the other, in five different poses. And his cover photo for “Help!” showed the Beatles standing side by side in matching blue outfits and making semaphore signals.
Robert Grahame Freeman was born on Dec. 5, 1936, in London to Freddy and Dorothy (Rumble) Freeman. His father was an insurance broker for theaters in London. During World War II, Robert was evacuated to Yorkshire for about a year while his sisters stayed in London.