Martin Scorsese is heading to Downtown Brooklyn this fall to sit down with Olivia Harrison for a conversation about her late husband George Harrison's secret life behind a camera. The event, set for October 6 at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House, ties into the release of a new book collecting the Beatle's personal photography from his years with the band. Tickets start at $35, with a $95 package that bundles admission with a copy of the book.
The talk centers on The Third Eye: Early Photographs, a new book collecting George Harrison's photography that Olivia Harrison curated herself, according to Brooklyn Eagle. The book offers a look into Harrison's time with the Beatles from 1963 to 1970 and features over 200 photographs. Random House is publishing the U.S. edition on October 6, with the U.K. edition following two days later through Ebury Spotlight, according to georgeharrison.com.
The 352-page collection draws on more than 250 color and black-and-white images plus 8mm film stills that Harrison shot on a Pentax camera between 1963 and 1969, capturing the band in Liverpool, Paris, Adelaide, Rishikesh, Tahiti, and at Shea Stadium. Harrison once explained his approach to the camera by saying, “I like cameras because you can see things in a different way, and you can make things look how they feel instead of how they are.”
A Long Creative Partnership Between Scorsese and the Harrison Estate
Olivia Harrison is George Harrison's widow, and her pairing with Scorsese for this event is not a one-off. Scorsese directed and co-produced the 2011 HBO documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World, a 208-minute film blending archive footage with interviews from Harrison's family and bandmates that won two Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming. He also wrote the foreword to Olivia Harrison's 2022 poetry collection, Came the Lightning: Twenty Poems for George, released to mark 20 years since Harrison's death in November 2001.
Scorsese, an Academy Award winner, will discuss the new photography book with Olivia Harrison onstage, per the same Brooklyn Eagle report. Book buyers hoping for more than photographs have something extra to look forward to: a limited deluxe edition releasing October 27 will include a 7-inch vinyl pressing of a previously unreleased George Harrison song, along with four photo prints and signed cards from Olivia Harrison, according to AXS TV. Neither the title nor the recording year of that unreleased track has been disclosed.
Literary Names Frame Harrison's Archive
Beyond Olivia Harrison's foreword, the book includes an introduction from author and former University of Liverpool chancellor Colm Tóibín and an afterword from Booker Prize-winning novelist George Saunders, according to AXS TV. Those essays situate Harrison's candid images within the broader cultural history of the 1960s, framing snapshots taken during quiet moments away from Beatlemania alongside more posed shots from the road.
The Third Eye arrives amid a broader trend of surviving Beatles opening up their private photo archives. It follows Paul McCartney's June 2023 book 1964: Eyes of the Storm, which featured 275 rediscovered 35mm photographs McCartney took at the height of Beatlemania after they sat unseen in his archive for decades, according to Bertelsmann.
Getting Tickets for the BAM Talk
The event takes place at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House, a historic Beaux-Arts theater in Downtown Brooklyn that opened in 1908 and seats 2,090 people, according to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It's presented through Unbound, a recurring book series co-presented by BAM and Fort Greene's Greenlight Bookstore that regularly brings high-profile author talks and book launches to the venue.
Tickets for BAM members go on sale Tuesday, with public tickets following on August 13, 2026, per Brooklyn Eagle. General admission starts at $35, while a $95 tier includes a copy of The Third Eye: Early Photographs. For Beatles fans in Brooklyn, it's a rare chance to hear one of cinema's most celebrated directors unpack the private world George Harrison saw through his own lens.
