Owen Edwards - Peter Beard - 2008

ISBN: 9783836508773

Two red linen-bound volumes with gold embossing in a dark blue linen slipcase. Slipcase with minor signs of wear, no annotations. Trilingual: German/English/French.
A fascinating journey into the world of Peter Beard: “This extravagant and magnificent book is a work of art in itself.” – L’EXPRESS, Paris

The photographer, collector, diarist and writer Peter Beard made his life into a work of art; the illustrated diaries, which he kept from a young age, developed into a serious artistic career and earned him a central place in the international art scene. He was portrayed by Francis Bacon, artistically worked on by Salvador Dalí, and created diaries together with Andy Warhol; he traveled with Truman Capote and the Rolling Stones and produced books with Jacqueline Onassis and Mick Jagger – all of whom in his work come to life literally as well as figuratively. As a fashion photographer he took Vogue stars such as Veruschka to Africa and brought back new faces – foremost Iman – to the United States. His passion for natural history and wildlife, which profoundly shaped his work, began in his youth. He had read Isak Dinesen’s books (Karen Blixen); after a stay in Kenya and a friendship with the author, he purchased a property in her neighborhood. It was the early 1960s: big game hunters led safaris, and life under the open sky as well as the landscape were still colored by those colonial elements Beard had read about in *Out of Africa* – but times were beginning to change. Beard witnessed the onset of Kenya’s population explosion, which strained the limited resources and put pressure on wildlife populations – among them the starving elephants of Tsavo, who died by tens of thousands in a stark, deforested wasteland. So he documented what he saw – in diaries, photographs and collages. He explored new, unusual paths by publishing unique and sometimes shocking books alongside these works. The carcasses of animals were shown without mercy; the facts were carefully recorded – sometimes machine-typed, often handwritten, occasionally even stained with blood. The volume gathers Peter Beard’s most significant collages as well as hundreds of smaller works and diary pages enlarged to make every detail visible – from Beard’s meticulous handwriting and drawings inspired by old masters to stones, bones and animal fragments pasted directly onto the page. Special features:

Two volumes in one linen slipcase
Volume 1: 200 pages of diary entries and 294 pages of collages, plus five fold-out pages; introduction by photo critic Owen Edwards. Almost all diary pages and collages from the original book are included, along with two new collages completed in 2007.

Volume 2: image index with captions for all illustrations from Volume 1; private photos and early works by the artist; an interview with the artist by Steven M. L. Aronson; a facsimile reprint of Beard’s handwritten essay from 1993 (appearing in the out-of-print first edition of the magazine *Blind Spot*); extensive bibliography, filmography and exhibition catalog.