Peter H. Beard,Owen Edwards,Steven M.L. Aronson,Ruth Ansel
Into the wild. Â Journey into the world of Peter Beard, Â  Photographer, collector, diarist, and writer of booksÂ ,Peter Beard,Â 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 byÂ ,Francis Bacon,and painted on byÂ ,Salvador DalÃ­,, he made diaries withÂ ,Andy Warhol,Â and toured withÂ ,Truman Capote,Â and the,Â Rolling Stones,â€”all of whom are brought to life, literally and figuratively, in his work. As a fashion photographer, he tookÂ ,Vogue,Â stars likeÂ ,Veruschka,Â to Africa and brought new onesâ€”most notablyÂ ,Iman,â€”back to the U.S. with him., Â , After spending time in Kenya and striking up a friendship with the author,Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen),Â in the early 1960s, Beard bought a piece of land near hers. He witnessed the dawn of Kenyaâ€™s population explosion, which challenged finite resources and stressed animal populationsâ€”including the starving elephants of Tsavo dying by the tens of thousands in a wasteland of eaten trees. So he documented what he sawâ€”with 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 carefully recorded, sometimes in type and often by hand. Beard uses his photographs as a canvas onto which he superimposes multi-layered contact sheets, ephemera, found objects, newspaper clippings that are elaborately embellished with meticulous handwriting, old-master inspired drawings and often swaths of animal blood used as paint., Â , In 2006 TASCHEN published the book that has come to define his oeuvre, signed by the artist and published in two volumes. It sold out instantly and became a highly sought after collectorâ€™s item.Â ,Now the book you couldnâ€™t get your hands on is available in one volume,, a handsome hardcover edition revised by Nejma Beard with new images never published before.
Art,Photography,Art,Nonfiction,History,Biography,Art and Photography
Peter Beard