Late in 1967, and about to turn 24 years old, I stuffed my backpack with clothes, chocolate bars, notebooks and my 35mm Pentax camera and set out on a journey to India to "find myself". A traumatic 'Dear Paul' letter, and the broken heart that followed, led me north from New Delhi to the foothills of the Himalayas and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram, where I hoped to learn meditation-and salve the pain.
  
I had no idea the Beatles, Mia Farrow, Donovan and Mike Love of the Beach Boys would be there, and over the following days I meditated, hung out with the Beatles and took some pictures of them. When I returned home to Toronto, I used several of the pictures in a magazine cover story, then put the transparencies away. Thirty years later, having totally forgotten about them, my 18 year-old daughter remembered a long-ago bedtime story I had told her about my first trip to India and asked to see the pictures.
  
We screened them and I was again struck by the simple, heartfelt images of these four young men, John, Paul, George and Ringo who were then, arguably, the most famous people on the planet. Yet, they were truly without airs, without star turns. They were playful, genuine and accessible.
  
Today, I am delighted to share with you these photographs and the anecdotes that unfolded with them. Finding these 'long lost' photos of the Fab Four and writing The Beatles in Rishikesh (Viking Studio, Penguin-Putnam) has afforded me the truly joyful pleasure of recalling my long-ago journey to India, a time of profound personal change, and my time with the Beatles, and to recently revisit Rishikesh itself.
  
The Collection is printed in museum quality Chromagenic-Dye Coupler-prints. For me, these C-Prints embody a powerful, very present yet intimate realism; a certain timeless magic that portrays the transcendent essence, the Soul, if you will, of the Beatles-four extraordinary guys whose music changed my life, and whom I had the good fortune to meet and photograph.
  
COMMENTS:
"The intimacy of these frames is quite remarkable-some of the best I have seen. The publication of Paul Saltzman's photographs is to be welcomed by both fans and historians of the Beatles alike, for these images provide a significant addition to the detail of what is a relatively little-recorded episode in the career of the most important rock group the world has known."

Stephen Maycock,
Former Curator, Rock 'n' Roll,
Sotheby's, London