About the Book
"Beard Bared" is a stunning journey into the world of Peter Beard. Photographer, collector, diarist, and writer of books Peter Beard has fashioned his life into a work of art; the illustrated diaries he kept from a young age evolved into a serious career as an artist and earned him a central position in the international art world. He was painted by Francis Bacon, painted on by Salvador Dali, and made diaries with Andy Warhol; he toured with Truman Capote and the Rolling Stones, created books with Jacqueline Onassis and Mick Jagger - all of whom are brought to life, literally and figuratively, in his work. As a fashion photographer, he took Vogue stars like Veruschka to Africa and brought new ones - most notably Iman - back to the U.S. with him. His love affair with natural history and wildlife, which informs most of his work, began when he was a teenager. He had read the books of Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) and after spending time in Kenya and befriending the author, bought a piece of land near hers.
It was the early 1960s and the big game hunters still led safaris, with all the colonial elements Beard had read about in Out of Africa still characterizing the open life and landscape, but the times were a-changing. Beard witnessed the dawn of Kenya's population explosion, challenged finite resources, and stressed animal populations - including the starving elephants of Tsavo, dying by the tens of thousands in a wasteland of eaten trees - and documented what he saw in diaries, photographs, and collages. He went against the wind in publishing unique and sometimes shocking books of these works. The corpses were laid bare; the facts were carefully written down sometimes in type, often by hand, occasionally with blood. Spilling out over the pages of this massive tome, Peter Beard's collages are reproduced as a group for the first time at the size they have always meant to be seen, many of them as foldouts. Hundreds of smaller-scale works and diaries fill the remaining spreads - magnified to show every detail, form Beard's meticulous handwriting and old-master-inspired drawings to stones and bones and bits of animals pasted to the page. The book comes complete with wooden stand ? and is a work of art in itself.
It also includes a bonus companion book, featuring extensive interview with the artist and personal photos, many of the never-before published. All colour illustrations are colour-separated and reproduced in Pan4C, the finest reproduction technique available today, which provides unequalled intensity and colour range.
About the Author :
Born in New York City, Peter Beard (born 1938) began keeping diaries and taking photographs as an adolescent. After graduating from Yale, he developed a keen interest in Africa; in the early 1960s he worked at Kenya's Tsavo National Park, during which time he photographed and documented the demise of over 35,000 elephants and published his first book, The End of the Game. His first show at Blum Helman Gallery came in 1975, and was followed in 1977 by the landmark installation of elephant carcasses, burned diaries, taxidermy, African artifacts, books and personal memorabilia at New York's International Center for Photography. In addition to creating original artwork, Beard has also worked as a fashion photographer and collaborated on projects with Andy Warhol, Andrew Wyeth, Richard Lindner, Terry Southern, Truman Capote, and Francis Bacon. In 1966, shortly after Beard was trampled by an elephant, his first major retrospective opened at the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, France, followed by others in Berlin, London, Toronto, Madrid, Milan, Tokyo, and Vienna. He now lives in New York City, Montauk Point, and Kenya with his wife Nejma and daughter Zara. Nejma Beard has been Peter Beard's agent and the director of the Peter Beard Studio since 2001. Since then she has curated and co-curated shows in Paris, London, Milan, and Los Angeles, and assisted on the publication of Zara's Tales. She met Peter Beard in Kenya in 1985 and they married soon thereafter. Their daughter Zara was born in 1988. David Fahey is co-owner of the Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles. During his 31-year career in the field, he has collaborated on the production of over 45 fine art photography books. He is the vice president of the Herb Ritts Foundation, a member of the Association International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), and serves on the Photography Advisory Council for the J. Paul Getty Museum. Ruth Ansel is an award-winning art director known for her innovative work at some of the most influential and successful magazines in America since the 1960s, including Harper's Bazaar, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, House & Garden, and Vogue. In 1992, she founded Ansel Design Studio and has continued her innovative approach to all aspects of design, producing photographic portfolios for The New Yorker, international fashion campaigns for Club Monaco, Karl Lagerfeld, Gucci, and Versace, and numerous books, including The End of the Game by Peter Beard, Dark Odyssey by Philipp Jones Griffith, The Sixties by Richard Avedon and Doon Arbus, and Women by Annie Leibovitz. Owen Edwards has written about photography for 30 years, for the New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, The Village Voice, Saturday Review, Vogue, Smithsonian magazine, and many other publications. He was the exhibitions critic for American Photographer magazine from 1978 to 1985. Steven M. L. Aronson, a former book publisher, is a writer and editor. He edited and published Peter Beard's book Longing for Darkness and wrote the Emmy Award-winning T.V. special The End of the Game. He is the author of HYPE and the co-author of the Edgar Award-winning Savage Grace.
Review :
"The most poignant are the ones of decomposing elephants where, over time, as they disintegrate, the bones form magnificent sculpture - sculpture which is not just abstract form but has all the memory traces of life, despair and futility." - Francis Bacon on Peter Beard's photographs"
