The Life of Peter Beard

How should history remember the 20th Century’s last wild man?

Ever find yourself in the middle of a meeting and wonder what would happen if you just said screw it? Why not spend your days smoking dope in a safari tent surrounded by supermodels while smearing blood all over collage art?

Photographer and artist Peter Beard sought the answers to these questions, living a life totally untethered by reality but at the same time grounded in primordial truth. 

In a way his own life was a piece of art, one that straddled the game reserves of East Africa and the nightclubs of lower Manhattan. Beard was a blue blood by birth, his great grandfather was James Jerome Hill, a gilded age railroad tycoon. Another grandfather is credited with inventing the tuxedo. Growing up in New York City, little Peter had nothing but the best. Eventually going on to Yale. 

Life did not stay on track for long, Peter quickly dropped out of premed to study fine art and photography. Social connections took him to Africa alongside a relative of Charles Darwin. In Africa he found both place and purpose, what resulted is one the 20th centuries most original life stories.

In the 60s he used his trust fund to purchase the forty five acres in Kenya which would become his base on the dark continent, Hog Ranch. For the next five decades Hog Ranch would be a never ending party and a quirky stop on the jet set circuit. Never one to care too much about comfort, Beard only had safari tents on the property with a hand pump shower and rickety generator for power.

During this period he rose to fame photographing the death of over thirty five thousand elephants from overpopulation in Tsavo National Park. These would become his breakout work The End of Game. The animals, without hunting and under human protection, overbread and eventually destroyed their habitat. Beard hated most “ecologists” and “conservationists” funded by Western do gooders. He believed hunting and herd management were essential for healthy wildlife.

While the artist was deeply involved with African wildlife, he also was a fixture at studio 54. His photography dove into fashion and he is credited with discovering the Supermodel Iman. From Playboy to Pirelli calendars, he loved nothing more than taking pictures of naked beautiful women in Africa next to wild animals.

In 1972 he got a commission to cover the Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street Tour. Befriending Mick Jagger they ended up spending the summer together in Montauk while Beard was bedding Jackie Onassis’s sister Lee Radzwill. The Rolling Stone’s song “Memory Hotel” is a relic from this period.

The photographer’s second wife was the first  supermodel Cheryl Tiegs.  From 1981 to 1983 the model had a tumultuous marriage. Peter organized legendary romantic dinner parties and lavish vacations, all of which were paid for by Cheryl. He also managed to carry on several affairs. Despite all this, in an interview for People at Peter’s death, she still say’s “It was the most romantic time of my life”.

While partying, marrying models, and chasing game, Beard prodigiously produced art. In the 90s he came into his own as a fine artist, taking his signature photos and customizing them with collage, handprints, and whatever else he wanted, including his own blood.

Like most of his life, his timing was excellent. The 90s and 2000s saw an explosion in the value of photographic art and Beard suddenly commanded much higher prices, even into the mid six figures.  He was terrible with money so this was much needed. After a particularly hedonistic month in Japan he was unable to buy a ticket home and his brother Anson told him “maybe it’s time you got a real job”. To which Peter responded “I’m sixty, what do you expect me to do?”

The party sort of ended in the 90s when Beard was gored by an elephant he was photographing. He also began to give the reins of his art empire to his third wife. Nejma Beard wanted her wayward husband all to herself and took steps to isolate him from his rambunctious friend group. Now in his 70s, things were slowing down. 

In 2020 Beard went missing. Most assumed he had escaped Nejma for one final lap of the New York night club world. Alas, now in his 80s he was suffering from dementia and had wandered off. A Long Island deer hunter found him three weeks later in the woods near his Montauk home. 

There are, as the woke set might say, “complicated” parts of his legacy. He’s charismatic yet aggressive womanizing would not stand me too scrutiny. There’s a decent chance, with nothing proven, that he was involved in passing off fake African art. Never carrying cash or credit cards, he was known to leave friends with exorbitant restaurant bills. He was probably a lefty, but not in today’s schoolmarm sort of way.

Peter Beard had faults, but he could be generous and focused on what he believed to be right, while passionately committed to his craft. Most people remember him very fondly and his art is only going up in esteem and value. 

Many who would find fault probably believe their own lack of sin proves their virtue, when in fact they just have not had the opportunity to live like Beard.