An extremely rare set of five black and white photographic prints taken from the original negative by the photographer Iain MacMillan which has been professionally mounted on art board at the time of production. The far-left print of John Lennon has been hand annotated in pencil by MacMillan ‘Dissolving Heads. New York. 1971’, the far-right print has been signed in pencil by Iain MacMillan.
While lain MacMillan is undoubtably best known for his Beatles photos from the cover of the Abbey Road LP, he also worked with John and Yoko. Iain created a series of five photographs of the couple which he called the ‘Dissolving Heads' where the viewer of the images moves from left to right through the sequence of five photographs and John morphs into Yoko.
lain MacMillan’s close up portraits of John and Yoko that formed the basis for the Dissolving Heads series were first used on the back cover of the catalogue for Yoko Ono's exhibition ‘This Is Not Here’ at New York's Everson Art Museum in October 1971. They were also used by John & Yoko on their 1971 U.S.A. single ‘Happy Christmas (War is Over), where the five images appeared in sequence on the record label. The Dissolving Heads series featured again on their single ‘Woman is the Nigger of the World’ released in 1972. The album ‘Some Time in New York City’, which was also released in 1972 was the last release to feature the Dissolving Heads. A set of Dissolving Heads portraits was exhibited in Dundee’s Discovery Point Gallery in Scotland from February 2010 to June 2010 in a retrospective exhibition of lain MacMillan’s photographs titled “From Dundee to Abbey Road”. Dundee was lain’s hometown and the exhibition celebrated his work. This was a public gallery space and nothing was available for sale to the public.
After the exhibition Yoko Ono negotiated the purchase of all lain's photographs featuring herself and John, including the set that were included in the Dundee exhibition so we know that Yoko herself owns a set.
These five silver gelatin photographs were made in the mid 1980s by photographer lain Macmillan in the darkroom from the original 1971 negatives. lain created the set from two negatives, one negative of the portrait of John (the first photograph in the sequence), and one of the portrait Yoko (the fifth in the sequence). The three other images in the sequence of the result of some technically challenging darkroom work by lain with both negatives, making double exposures with varying exposure times to give the morphing effect. The resulting photographic image shows the one image superimposed over the other. One image is emphasized over the other by being exposed for longer. When producing Dissolving Heads, lain would have carefully timed the exposure of each frame to create the ‘merging’ effect. The complex nature of the process means that no two complete sets of Dissolving Heads portraits will ever be exactly the same.
May Pang, who was the Lennon’s PA in New York in the early 1970s recalls watching lain develop the Dissolving Heads photographs “Well, remember that there was no Photoshop or computers back then, and that is a key point. It is amazing that he was able to accomplish this. lain had to do all of that by hand. Imagine that! I remember him working on those photos, painstakingly, and how he’d come back from the dark room with some outtakes that were really funny. You know, he'd come out with the eyes or mouth not lined up right, (laughs) and he'd show me and we'd laugh ourselves sick. They were so funny.”
Dimensions: Each photograph measures 20cm x 25cm (8 inches x 10 inches). Each art board mount measures 25.5cm x 30.5cm (10 inches x 12 inches).
Condition: Excellent.
Authentication: Gotta Have Rock and Roll Certificate of Authenticity.
