The Third Eye: Early Photographs: A Guest Post from George Saunders

See The Beatles through the eyes of George Harrison. From worldly adventures to quiet, behind-the-spotlight moments, George’s camera captured his bandmates, and Olivia Harrison’s curated compilation of over 200 images offers an intimate glimpse into the early days of the iconic musicians. Read on for an exclusive essay from acclaimed novelist and lifelong Beatles fan, George Saunders.

What an experience it was to get an early look at a trove of photos by George Harrison, some eighty percent of which have never been seen before, and then write about them, in the afterword to The Third Eye: Early Photographs.

We think we know what that era was all about – that we have a reliable idea of the Sixties and the Beatles and so on – but these photos reminded me that, really, we don’t have reliable ideas of what any period was like. The world back then (like the world this very moment) was too vast and multiple for any one limited mind to take in completely. We’re left with outlines and cliches, but the world then was every bit as colorful and dynamic and wild as it is now.

From The Third Eye: Early Photographs | George Harrison © G.H. Estate Ltd.

That’s the source of the jolt I felt again and again, looking through the images in The Third Eye: the feeling of being startled by the perpetual newness of phenomenon. This was, maybe, Harrison’s, and The Beatle’s, best gift: to briefly get free, by way of their art, from the habitual. Harrison did this instinctually, it seems, in that instant of choosing that occurs as one takes a photo – he does it again and again here. The images surprised me, delighted me, made us feel, “Ah, right, the world – I hardly know it.”

From The Third Eye: Early Photographs | George Harrison © G.H. Estate Ltd.

It also made me realize what a miracle The Beatles were, and what a vital part of that miracle Harrison was.

And what a pleasure it was, after all these years, and as an older person, to think back on the effect George Harrison had on the spiritual orientation of a whole generation of people, myself included. He opened doors for a lot of us, showed us the East, and did so with such affability that it made that path easier for us to go down, when it was our time.

That’s in these photos too: his wonder at finding himself in India, the courage and joy of his dawning recognition that what he had learned as young man in Liverpool and as a Beatle (about awareness, people, kindness, about the way the mind works) was, of course, there, refined, in the Eastern traditions. These ideas, he concluded, were familiar to him, and valuable, and he made them feel familiar and valuable to many of us, too.

From The Third Eye: Early Photographs | George Harrison © G.H. Estate Ltd.

More than anything else, experiencing The Third Eye is, I think you’ll find, a complete blast – a visceral experience, of remembering, but also of being trained by George Harrison himself to see things anew.