Peter Beard - Visual Kunstkammers

Peter Beard with then wife Cheryl Tiegs

Photographer and artist Peter Beard was born in NYC in 1938 to a family of privilege with wealth that stemmed from railroads and tobacco. His life was one with WASP-ish pursuits - sailing, rugby and beautiful women. 

A handsome athletic man with artistic tendencies, he entered Yale University intending to study Pre-Med but changed to Art History.

His photography included a coterie of models, rock stars and African wildlife. He was a photographer on that tour, the Rolling Stones tour in 1972. 

His art stems from his journals that he began writing when he was 11 years old. He began photographing images as a way to supplement his journals, to help document his world.

He discovered Africa through the pages of Karen Blixen's Out of Africa and first traveled there in 1955. He began shooting the wildlife of Africa in particular the elephants.

He has used his life and experience though the medium of photography to build a visual kunstkammer, or wunderkammer (wonder room). The kunstkammer was a collection of sorts of one's life conveyed through natural history, ethnology, works of art, etc. 

It was a diary of one's life, displayed though objects by which one could control the observation of their life and be their own director. A curiousity cupboard, sort of a precusor to a museum perhaps.

Jenny and her Jewelry 2005/2006

Gelatin silver print with gelatin silver and color collage

70.5 x 50 inches

(179.1 x 127 cm)

Unique

Jenny and her Jewelry 2005/2006

Gelatin silver print with gelatin silver and color collage

70.5 x 50 inches

(179.1 x 127 cm)

Unique

His art is directly reflective of this genre as he uses collages/assemblages with objects and images to detail his world. He uses handwritten notes along with blood, fur and dirt to create. 

He was encouraged in his art by none other than Francis Bacon. Beard orbited Bacon's sun-like persona, enthralled to be in his presence. "I had my best times with Fran," Beard said, "The drunker he got, the more sense he made."

While Beard has more or less left Africa behind him, his career is still flourishing. He shot the 2009 Pirelli calendar in Okavango Delta, Botswana with illustrious models such as Lara Stone, Isabell Fontana and Emanuella de Paula.