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With the Beatles: Paul, John and George relax between takes |
A HOARD OF 500 photographs, many previously unseen, recording The Beatles in candid moments during the filming of their second feature film Help! has been discovered amongst a collection donated to the University of Dundee by the family of photojournalist Michael Peto.
The 500 black and white images, many of which feature John, Paul, George and Ringo relaxing between takes, are now to become a unique resource for students of a new postgraduate course in the history and practice of photography being run jointly by the Universities of Dundee and St Andrews.
The images were hidden within a treasure trove of 130,000 photographs and negatives which Peto’s stepson Michael Fodor gifted the University of Dundee in 1971 following Peto's death. After lying unnoticed for three decades, they were only recently discovered when the collection was being sorted and digitised for The Visual Evidence, a project to create an internet database of the photographic archives of St Andrews, Dundee and Aberdeen Universities. |
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When I was younger: archive has 500
photos from the making of Help! |
Other gems in the Peto collection include shots of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Cambridge's Prospect Theatre Company and rare images of CS Lewis.
Pat Whatley, head of the University’s Archives, said, “Peto, whose collection is on a level with Cartier-Bresson, was a particularly charismatic individual who persuaded many famous but private figures, such as CS Lewis, to allow him to photograph them.
“He was a people’s photographer and his photographs reflect the ‘backstage’ nature of his work, and are quite unique in this respect.”
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