More than 300 unseen photographs of The Beatles early US shows have sold for £253,200 at auction.
The archive, consisting of 413 negatives sold by Omega Auctions, was taken by a plucky teenager called Mike Mitchell.
Two days after The Beatles triumphant American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show on 11 February 1964, they played their first US show at the Washington Coliseum to 8,092 fans. One of those fans was Mike Mitchell.
Aged just 18, Mike couldn’t even afford a flash for his camera, so he had to take advantage of all the natural lighting he could get his hands on. He did, however, have a press pass which he had managed to blag through a magazine contact, gaining him access to the first wave of Beatles mania on US shores.
He captured 413 negatives in total, and even clambered up on stage with the fab four at their Baltimore Civic Centre in order to get the perfect shot.
As reported by the BBC, he said: "I was very motivated to come up with stuff that was as unique as could possibly be. I looked and noticed that nobody was up on the stage. I thought, I wonder what it would be like to be up on the stage and see what I could get up there.”
Until now only 46 of these photographs had been seen, with the rest tucked away in a box in his basement.
Omega summed up the photographs as "intimate, due to Mitchell's proximity to the band; they are moody, the result of existing light; and they are innocent, reflecting a time of heightened optimism."
To see some of the shots, watch Mike talk about his experience photographing the The Beatles below.
