The Beatles are finally going to play Virginia.

The Chrysler Museum of Art will be the first institution in the United States to exhibit “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm.” The display, opening Dec. 5, features more than 260 photographs taken by McCartney during the earliest, headiest days of Beatlemania and the group’s first triumphant trip to America.

The exhibition comes directly from London’s National Portrait Gallery, where, earlier this year, it debuted to enthusiastic responses from music fans and historians alike. The exhibit has been accompanied by a large photo book with a foreword from New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore and text by the man himself.

“This show has been slightly customized for us,” says Lloyd DeWitt, chief curator at the Chrysler Museum. “They’ve added some more proof sheets and two additional photos from Washington D.C. because that’s important to people from this area.” (D.C. is the closest the Fab Four ever came to the Old Dominion). The exhibit is no dash-off celebrity photo show, he maintains. “It’s this amazing event seen through the man’s own eyes.”

“People are aware that Beatlemania changed the music scene forever,” says Sarah Brown, who helped to curate the exhibit with McCartney. “We now have that moment frozen in time in these pictures. We’ve never really been able to view it from the other side of the camera before. We’ve seen the screaming fans and the Beatles being pulled in and out of cars but you haven’t seen it from the Beatles’ eyes. You are getting a real intimate look at their lives at that key turning point.”

Brown is the official photo curator for McCartney’s MPL Communications, mainly handling the photographic legacy of McCartney’s late wife, professional photographer Linda McCartney. “I have a grounding in putting together exhibitions and in curating and it was always through the Linda archive,” Brown says, calling from Norfolk, where she is installing the “Eye of the Storm” exhibit. “This is the first time we’ve turned our attention to focus on the Paul archive in such a way.”

At first, this photographic trove from 1963-64 – more than 1,000 pics – was largely ignored. But contrary to press reports, Brown says that they were never lost. “I didn’t discover them. They were just quietly sitting there. The archive team had probably scanned them over ten years ago, they had been digitized and keyworded. I was doing research one day and found them … I didn’t know they existed. Then Paul brought up these photos in a meeting and I said, ‘we have them.’ And he said, ‘let’s have a look at them.’”

Brown says that, from the moment he reviewed the photos, McCartney knew their importance to the Beatles story and set out to put together a book and an exhibit. He not only penned a caption for nearly every photo in the book, he personally chose the exhibit’s color scheme and how the chosen shots would be framed.

But, Brown says, there were perimeters. “He didn’t want to be presented as if he were a professional photographer. Instead, he’s saying ‘I was an amateur, I was practicing and I was learning how to take pictures and they happened to capture quite an extraordinary moment in social history and culture.’” To the then-21-year-old, on the cusp of world stardom, they were “tourist snaps,” she adds. “He was taking them because he didn’t know how long this ride was going to last. He really took them for his family back in Liverpool, the only people who would see them. He was just trying to capture memories.”

It’s interesting work, DeWitt says. A little more creative than mere tourist snaps. “There’s odd signs and buildings, quirky placements and ironic juxtapositions. There’s a very poignant picture of the White House taken a short time after J.F.K’s assassination, but there’s also burlesque houses. He wants to document it all. He’s also kind of a genius, he does all of these different things well and you can see the care with which he takes the picture.”

DeWitt notes that Paul’s Pentax Camera had no light meter so he had to manually place the settings. “And the focus was a fuzzy thing in the middle. It took more time to set up.” Among other artifacts, the Chrysler curator says that Norfolk’s version of the “Eyes of the Storm” exhibit will feature an example of the actual Pentax model camera that McCartney used.

The photographs are a fascinating assembly that showcases Paul’s bandmates, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, and insiders such as producer George Martin, manager Brian Epstein and Paul’s then-girlfriend Jane Asher, among others. Along with the odd charming selfie, the images also show firsthand what it was like to be the subject of intense public fervor and persistent paparazzi. Some of the most visceral snapshots in the exhibit are those of the army of photographers plaguing the group.

“What the photos capture is how close and how viewed they were,” Brown says. “He didn’t use a zoom so these people were really in his face. He turned his own camera on them, as if to say, ‘I can take your picture too.’ As the exhibit progresses, you can see him learn how to use light, how to load film … even then he had a great appreciation for the art of photography.”

While the assembly includes images of period celebrities such as Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes and British singer Cilla Black, it is often McCartney’s shots of ordinary Americans that resonate deepest. “Paul has a real affection and appreciation for the working person. He was from a working class family in Liverpool and he’s taking pics of someone sweeping the snow, the policeman, the waitress … he’s giving them as much profile and respect and intrigue as he is the celebs. They are no different.”

The exhibit also documents the group’s game-changing February 1964 appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” “That TV show really catapulted them into this complete international stardom with 73 million tuning in to see them,” says Brown. “It was an iconic moment in America,” DeWitt echoes. “Everyone knows where they were when they watched it.” Paul’s photographs show how close the band were both before and after that appearance, adds Brown. “They had fun but you see how hard they work. They did 18 days of shows in Paris, sometimes three shows a day, before they even came to the U.S.”

One of McCartney’s personal favorites, and Brown’s, is the photo of an unknown girl in Washington D.C., peering through the Beatles’ car window. “This young girl is just serenely looking back into the camera,” she says. “Paul’s caught her with this chiaroscuro lighting shining on her, he’s framed her with the door and she’s just smiling back at him with this head scarf on looking calm and serene. It’s a quiet pause because his photos before it show hysteria and Beatles fans screaming and crying. We always think of these fans as crazy people and he’s showing his other side of the coin, this complete serenity, and a real connection to the subject he’s taking a picture of. It’s a beautiful image and we’ve enlarged it in the exhibit so it doesn’t get lost.”

“Eyes of the Storm,” fittingly, starts in Liverpool, the Beatles’ hometown, before they embarked on their fateful U.S. trip. “The photos show them performing in cinemas and small local venues, not massive stadiums or to huge audiences,” Brown says. “It’s nice to have a moment to pause and think about how they were just four ordinary guys from Liverpool and how it was going to be such an extraordinary journey for them.”

“Looking at these photos now, decades after they were taken, I find there’s a sort of innocence about them,” McCartney said in a press release for the exhibit. “Everything was new to us at this point. But I like to think I wouldn’t take [these photos] any differently today.”

“Eyes of the Storm” is slated to run in Norfolk until April 7, 2024. So one has to ask: Will Sir Paul make an appearance at any point to see his work exhibited at the Chrysler?

“I’m not sure,” Brown laughs. “He’s currently touring in Brazil. But I don’t know what he has planned for next year. If his schedule allows, who knows?”

“Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” will be exhibited from Dec. 5, 2023 – April 7, 2024 at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk. Dec.5-6 are open only to Chrysler Museum member subscribers. For tickets and information, goto https://chrysler.org