Few artists have enjoyed lives as full and careers as long-lived as Peter Beard's. For decades the 68-year-old photographer and writer has documented his own and his friends' earthly and artistic adventures, while passionately chronicling the vanishing wildlife of Kenya, his second home.
Along the way, he's had more than a few adventures. He was once stomped by an elephant. He moved to Kenya and made Hog Ranch his home base in East Africa, on property adjacent to that of Karen Blixen (Isak Dineson), the author of Out of Africa. And he's credited with discovering the supermodel Iman on a street in Nairobi. ("Peter Beard saw me walking on campus and took a few pictures," Iman once told an interviewer. "He took the photos back to New York and showed them to the Wilhelmina Models agency. . . . I'd never seen a fashion magazine in my life.")
And always, he kept journals. Rhinos, giraffes, crocodiles, and other totemic creatures appear again and again in his collages, often—unsurprisingly, considering the arc of the man's life—alongside images of impossibly beautiful women and the likes of Warhol, Dali, and the Rolling Stones.
In 2007, Taschen will publish the $6,500 Peter Beard, Collector's Edition, No. 1–125 with a signed, gelatin-silver print of 965 Elephants, and Peter Beard, Collector's Edition No. 126–250 with a signed, gelatin-silver print of Fayel Tall. Peter Beard, Art Edition, No. 251–2500, signed by Beard and available in December, sells for $2,500.
Men's Vogue recently conducted a quick email Q&A with Beard, in an attempt to gauge where and how this colossal book fits into his long career. His replies came back in short order—a series of impish, oddly endearing dispatches from another dimension:
Men's Vogue: What made you decide to release this book now?
Peter Beard: The decision had little to do with me.
Men's Vogue: Does it have any sort of personal significance for you?
Beard: I like to think of it as a life-thickening time capsule.
Men's Vogue: Does the book bring to mind any particularly amusing or harrowing anecdotes?
Beard: Six hundred pages of them.
Men's Vogue: How will the fact that it's in foldout format for the first time change the way that people view your work?
Beard: Take a look. What do you think?
Men's Vogue: Does the continuing depletion of African wilderness frustrate and weary you, or does it inspire you to create more art at an even more rapid pace?
Beard: End of the Game was my first book in 1965 and things have been steadily getting worse ever since.
Men's Vogue: Are there any particular themes that resonate for you the most?
Beard: Cultivate your compost heap.
Men's Vogue: How have your influences changed over time?
Beard: From potty to pot.
Was he pulling our leg? Maybe—but if anyone's earned the right over the years to misbehave, it's probably Peter Beard.
The Taschen books—edited by Nejma Beard, his wife, agent, and the director of his studio—include gallery-quality reproductions of Beard's huge, meticulous collages as well as hundreds of smaller-scale writings, drawings, and diary entries.
If you'd like a copy for yourself, or have someone in mind who would appreciate a 600-page journey through Peter Beard's singular world, you'd best get to it: Copies 1 through 250 of both Collector's Editions have already sold out.
