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Boca Raton, FL: Foreword by Lord Puttnam of Queensgate CBE
Extract from dust cover - "A celebration of Liverpool life in the Sixties, "It's the story behind the story of that magic era," says Mike McCartney, whose affectionate and witty photographs of 1960s Liverpool catch familiar subjects in a different light in private moments or from odd angles. In amongst iconic images of Liverpool, like the menacing beak of a Liver Bird, are intimate family scenes, first cars, and candid shots of passing legends like Gene Vincent.
Many of these photographs capture moments in his childhood home - 20 Forthlin Road of which Mike says: "it was a fascinating and concentrated volume of energy and memories, some sad, lots happy. Every picture tells far more than just a story." It was these evocative images that helped persuade the National Trust to take the unprecedented step of buying this ordinary Liverpool terraced house for the nation.
Mike is just as at home in front of the camera as behind it: one of the three 'lively wacker wits' in the humorous satirical group Scaffold, he stormed the pop world with chart toppers Thank U Very Much, Lily the Pink and Liverpool Lou.
Now with a string of exhibitions at prestigious venues behind him, the self-styled 'working class photographer' actually started off with books on photography from his local library, and learned his art over years of experiment-ation and practice. Mike was nicknamed Flash Harry by Brian Epstein as he was always to be found with camera and flash gun at all the cool rock 'n roll venues on Merseyside.
Throughout an extraordinary career, Mike McCartney has had unrivalled access to some of the greatest rock 'n roll stars in the world when they came to Liverpool. Both halves of the rock star life are shown in his photographs, from the adrenaline-fuelled stage acts of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, to young music legends like Graham Nash snoozing on a train. The Shadows, Billy J Kramer, the Hollies, Jeff Beck, Georgie Fame and, of course, the biggest of them all Scaffold are all seen through Mike's Macroscopic lens.
The exhibition of photographs MMLL: Mike McCartney's Liverpool Life was first seen at the Museum of Alberta in 2002, then opened at the Museum of Liverpool Life in May 2003. Mike has been invited to take the exhibition to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC for six months in 2004 before touring the show to Japan and Australia.
