NEW HOPE, Pa. - "Wow. Gee, I recognize all that," said May Pang as she walked into New Hope's Arete Gallery. Photos hanging represent days of her life with John Lennon.
"This is the first time you've seen them hanging out?" I said to Pang.
"Like this," she responded.
From a stroll in Walt Disney World in 1974, a cup of Hot and Sour Soup, to a sprawled-out Lennon in the Long Island Sound, Pang captured the candid and contrived of the former Beatle.
"He was a good subject to work with. And John gave me, you know, carte blanche because he actually liked my eye on him. He never liked pictures. He was very particular about his own photographs of himself," she said.
In her documentary "The Lost Weekend, a Love Story," Pang chronicled the pair's 18-month relationship, an affair encouraged by Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, when she and John were having marital problems.
Pang says between 1973 and 1975 she and Lennon were inseparable.
Photo/thumbnail image from MayPang.com. 69 News Reporter Bo Koltnow interviews May Pang, a former music executive who worked for John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and had a relationship with Lennon. She is going on a national tour displaying her photographs from that time period.
"In New York City, when John and I got our apartment, the doorbell rang. I asked him who it was, he said go down and check, and the first visitor was Paul and Linda McCartney," she described.
The surprise guests were in stark contrast to the shot Pang captured of John on the phone with lawyers while at Disney World talking about last-minute details of the Beatles breakup. She also got his signature, representing the official end of the Beatles.
"He's the last signature. And you could see an attempt. It's not at the end. It's as he's signing. John Lennon," she said of the shot she's very proud of getting.
"One of my favorites is with Julian. Not a lot of people saw him with his father, he is smiling. Which is a good thing for a kid," she said of the pic between John and Jullian.
As for Lennon's favorite, Pang says it's a 1974 shot in the Catskills, with their friends, two dogs, and John in mid turn back to the camera.
"He liked that one was because of his Aran sweater. He was so proud of his Irish heritage that he goes, that was his favorite sweater. So, he loved it," she described, as they would often go to Ellenville, New York and stay at a friend's cabin.
Their relationship ended when Lennon went back to Ono in 1975. The last time the pair spoke was Memorial Day 1980.
The negatives of the pictures she took sat under her couch for years.
"So, there was a time when you almost tossed them?" I asked her.
"Yes. I kept saying, what am I going to do with these things," she said, adding she has pictures John drew as well.
The more than two dozen prints are now for sale through Sunday at Arete, as Pang is starting a national gallery tour, with the next stop in Northeast Ohio.
"What do you hope people get from these pictures?"
"I want them to see the John I saw," she said.
