Peter Beard

Peter Beard 

collage of diaries

Mick & Bianca Jagger july 1972

Malgosia Bela & Daria Werbowy

The Peter Beard book is a visual diary of many diaries, more than a book itself. Three cups of tea later I realizad that more than an hour and a half had passed since I opened it and I was no where near bringing myself to close it. In a beautiful introduction Owen Edwards refers to him as an amazing omnivore creature and some of Beard’s personal texts on Africa follow him.  He talks about how he saw the land get stripped from life through the years and how he witnessed the biggest world’s natural park become a tourist filled parking lot.  The rest of the book: his images, his collages, his blood tainted pictures and a side of África that we might only be able to see in pictures these days. Friend to Francis Bacon, Bianca and Mick Jagger, Jackelline Kennedy and Andy Wharhol just to name a few, Beard has been a very influential photographer which I just happen to love because of his very raw eye on photography. His fashion take on photography is as raw aswell. He shot the 2009 pirelli calendar in Africa and it was just amazing to see Lara Stone feeding an elephant in a black seethrough body fitted suit, and Isabelli Fontana looking as if she was beeing atacked by a gigantic bug, or Daria Werbowy hanging from an elephant’s horn while managing to smoke a cigarette. Peter Beard’s work just screams outloud from every page.

M.