©Peter Beard, Courtesy of Peter Beard Studio
This is an extraordinary book – it is heavy (5 kilos on my scale), a stunning mix of pictures, a celebration of colours. In case you are – like me – not familiar with the work of Peter Beard: this tome is an invitation into his very personal way to document his interests – from African wildlife to celebrities. "This extravagant and magnificent book is a work of art in itself", somebody at L'Express magazine penned and this is indeed very well put.
We not only get to see many fabulous photographs, we also are shown stream-of-consciousness collages and excerpts from diaries that are very probably not meant to be read but to be perceived as illustrations.
©Peter Beard, Courtesy of Peter Beard Studio
Peter Beard grew up in privileged circumstances, went to Yale where he majored in art and, when asked to admit "that some of your photographs helped to define the terms in which the paradise that was Africa continues to be seen", said: "Believe me, a lot of it was just blind chance – sheer accident. And I always hope for really good accidents." Right, but you need of course to make yourself ready for them.
The combination of images you get to see in this tome is truly unique: shots of models mixed with shots of wildlife, pics of elephants, of a half-naked model on a pile of books near a river, of a dog fascinated by a painting on the wall, of the young Rolling Stones on tour and on stage ...
Owen Edwards detects in Beard's photography "a kind of madness" – and I certainly concur. The most obvious to me however is that Beard is an obsessive collector. Again Edwards: " ... models and Masai, politicians and pop icons, brassiere ads and bleached bones, lions and lunatics, crocs and self-mockery, soup cans and severed heads, private heroes and public enemies, rhinos and blood smears, strippers and starvation. In urgent fugues, themes appear, then recur again and again in seemingly endless variations. Beard, composer and conductor, constructor of contradictions, binds everything with meticulous drawings, the needlepoint of compulsive handwriting, even the mysterious intrusion of his own hands."
©Peter Beard, Courtesy of Peter Beard Studio
Leafing through this book is a mesmerising and mind-boggling experience although I had no idea what to make of it for most of the time I did not even know what I was looking at. Not that it bothered me, I did not feel that I needed to know what my eyes were showing me, I simply enjoyed the trance-like state that these images evoked.
As much as many of these pictures inspired my imagination, after quite a long while spending time with them I wanted to know more. The picture index helped – well, to some extent, that is, I mean what I'm supposed to do with "Detail of Diary Page (Since 1977)" or "Running Giraffe, June 1960"? I did however also learn that I was looking at pics of Karen Blixen or of Bianca Jagger.
In sum: an impressive Gesamtkunstwerk by an obsessive collector who doesn't shy away from contradictions but celebrates them.
Peter Beard
Taschen, Cologne 2013
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