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This Twitter project to hunt down the source photos for the Sgt Pepper cover is fascinating #SgtPepperPhotos

Normal Bates. Updated April 10th, 2017

Have you ever wondered about the cardboard cutouts used on the Beatles LP cover Sgt Pepper?

Beatles fan @Chrisshaweditor has and he writes, “I’ve set myself a project to source all the original photos used on the Sgt Pepper cover. Not as easy as it sounds…”

We got in touch to ask Chris to tell us more:

Being a bit of a Beatles obsessive, I’m excited about the 50th anniversary rerelease of Sgt Pepper. The legendary album cover is regularly popping up on my news feeds and I became curious as to the origins of the photos Peter Blake used to create the iconic sleeve.

My first search was for Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller (the picture behind Ringo and Paul). When I eventually located the source image, with the unexpected chimp and horn, it was so bizarre and out of context it piqued my interest.

I’ve now set myself the challenge of hunting down all of the original pictures on the sleeve. I may be some time #SgtPepperPhotos

Chris Shaw has researched 21 so far and is putting up more every day. This is a a captivating project, delving in detail into something we’d never considered but is just hiding in plain sight, waiting to be explored:

1 Yukteswar Giri

2 Aleister Crowley

3 Mae West

4 Lenny Bruce

5 Karlheinz Stockhausen

6 WC Fields

7 Carl Jung

8 Edgar Allan Poe

9 Marlon Brando

10 Sir Robert Peel

11 Bob Dylan

12 Johnny Weissmuller

13 Dylan Thomas

14 Tony Curtis

15 Shirley Temple

16 HG Wells

17 Lewis Carroll

18 Oscar Wilde

19 Stuart Sutcliffe

20 Alberto Vargas painting

21 Marlene Dietrich

And a bonus one:

If you want to see the latest ones then head over to the #sgtpepperphotos hashtag over on Twitter.

And keep up the good work Chris – we want to see how this finishes.

Source: Twitter/@ChrisShawEditor