Beatles from above

I’m entranced by this photo of the Beatles. I first found it on Stevey.com, where several commenters apparently felt the same way. It’s rare to see the world’s finest band from this angle, and as a wannabe musician myself, I always love interesting gig photography. At any rate, I realized I would love to track down the original photograph and find a print that I could frame.

Fortunately, the commenters on another site made a concerted effort to date the performance, eventually even tracking down some Youtube clips of the performance, from Paris in June 1965. From there, someone else identified the photo as coming from Paris Match — he even had a scan of the original printing. However, it was a bit beaten up after forty-three years, and too low a resolution to be blown up much.

At that point, a quick search told me that Harvard’s libraries have Paris Match issues going back to the forties. I was worried they might just be microfilm, but in act was pleasantly surprised when a librarian helping me hoisted a heavy archive box onto the counter — they’ve got the actual issues. I tracked down the image in question (contra the earlier commenter’s recollection, it was actually from the first issue in July of that year), and scanned it several ways at 300dpi. The results, along with a quick scan of the rest of the article for posterity are here.

So that’s where I am right now. Obviously, the printed photograph isn’t the best — it was reduced to dot printing, and it’s marred by some typography that, er, didn’t age well. Seeing the original confirmed for me that the photographer was one Michel Le Tac. M. Le Tac is all but un-Googleable, so I think my next step is to contact the magazine directly… Perhaps, in the end, I’ll have call to learn something about French copyright law.

Update, 03/06/2009 I heard back from Paris Match. Unfortunately, it looks like they don’t license to particuliers. There’s always the chance that I’ve misunderstood something, as our entire email conversation was conducted through Babel Fish, but it looks like I’m out of luck as a private citizen. I’m still thinking, though…