Biography

Robert Freeman (5 December 1936 – 6 or 7 November 2019) was an English photographer and graphic designer best known for his work with the Beatles, shooting some of the band's most recognizable images featured on several of their album covers. From 1963 to 1966, he worked extensively with the group and did the photography and design on five of their album sleeves released consecutively on the Parlophone label in the UK, as well as on several albums on Capitol Records in the US and on various labels in other countries. Freeman designed the end credit sequences for their first two films and some of the graphics and photography displayed on the films' posters and promotional materials.

He worked as a film director on the Swinging London cult film The Touchables in 1968, which starred Judy Huxtable and David Anthony, and featured music by the British band Nirvana. He co-directed the 1969 film Secret World (La Promesse) with Paul Feyder.Freeman first came to prominence as a photo journalist working for the British newspaper The Sunday Times, for which he photographed a variety of subjects, including Nikita Khrushchev in the Kremlin. He had also become noted for his black-and-white photographs of several jazz musicians including John Coltrane. It was these photographs which impressed the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein and the Beatles themselves and led to his first commission in August 1963 to photograph the group. He was selected to photograph the entirety of the first ever Pirelli Calendar, shot in 1963 for the year 1964.