During her ten-year marriage to George Harrison, Pattie Boyd was a prominent member of the Beatles’ inner circle and enjoyed the kind of access to the group that only a handful of people would ever know.
Boyd introduced Harrison to Transcendental Meditation in August 1967, and she accompanied the Beatles the following year when they made their historic trek to Rishikesh, a small town near the foothills of the Himalayas. Well known as a religious center that has attracted yogis and gurus for centuries, Rishikesh was home to the ashram of TM’s progenitor, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
“The few photographs Pattie has exhibited of Rishikesh represent documentary photography at its finest,” said Dr. Michael DeMarsche, an art consultant who is handling all enquiries into the purchase of the portfolio. “Last summer, I asked Pattie if she had taken any additional photographs of the Beatles in Rishikesh. I was shocked when she showed me so many. None of them had been exhibited. We felt they needed to be seen together and decided to compile a portfolio. This makes it far easier and affordable for private collectors and museums to purchase and exhibit them.”
You have to understand that the Maharishi vigilantly guarded the Beatles' privacy," DeMarsche states. "The international press was rarely allowed in the compound. The photographs of George, John and Cynthia Lennon with the Maharishi were taken during private lectures, which he seldom granted. Who else but Pattie Boyd could have taken photographs during these extraordinarily intimate moments? Pattie's photographs are the only ones I know that provide such a candid view of the Beatles' private world in Rishikesh. There is nothing like them. She captures so many unguarded moments in these photographs. They contain the kind of insights that only a true Beatles insider could have revealed."
