Beatles photographer Robert Whitaker at La Jolla exhibit

Robert Whitaker, who took many famous photos of The Beatles in the mid-1960s, appeared at an exhibit of his photography at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in La Jolla, California on Saturday, April 25. (Whitaker is pictured on the left with Morrison Hotel Gallery owner and photographer, Henry Diltz)

Whitaker's most famous picture of The Beatles is probably the notorious album cover for the U.S. album release of "Yesterday and Today" known as the "butcher" cover. Whitaker describes where the idea for the photo shoot of The Beatles pictured with baby dolls and slabs of meat came from: "It was inspired by a dream I had about the Beatles being ripped to shreds by all these young girls when they came out of a stadium."


Whitaker's first shots of The Beatles were taken in Australia in 1964 when he was running a freelance photo studio in Melbourne. The Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, then asked Whitaker to become a staff photographer at NEMS. One of his first assignments was photographing The Beatles during their second American tour including the historic Shea Stadium concert in 1965 in New York. He spent the next two years traveling with The Beatles and shooting them on tour, in the recording studio, during private moments and in formal photo sessions.

Whitaker recently published a book of his photographs of The Beatles called "Eight Days a Week: Inside the Beatles Final World Tour". The exhibit at the La Jolla location of the Morrison Hotel Gallery runs through May 31.