‘His Creativity Was Alarmingly Boundless’: Friends and Colleagues Remember the Late Wildlife Photographer and Artist Peter Beard

Last week, renowned wildlife photographer Peter Beard
was found dead in Montauk, New York, at the age
of 82. We asked some of his friends and colleagues for their
remembrances.

Margrit Rammé,
model

During my career, I did not do many nude photos. But since
running around naked in front of one’s boyfriend is natural, there
are quite a number of Peter’s photos where I am wearing nothing,
either in nature or in Montauk. The photo sitting at the edge of
the cliff with the bull elephant tusk was taken in Montauk.

And when we were in London, at the National Museum of History,
where the largest female elephant tusks are exhibited, Peter asked
me to strip and lay down and he took those photos, now famous. He
asked the guard to turn around, but I wonder if he listened.

Life with Peter was always an adventure. During one of the
summers, when the Rolling Stones rented the house next to Peter’s
compound, they hung out with us all the time, giving us private
concerts around the fire. I still have photos that Peter took of me
combing Mick Jagger’s hair.

Especially in Africa, Peter often exposed himself to danger.
When we talked about it, he usually said that he has no interest of
dying in a bed.

Peter Tunney,
agent

Peter had this overarching wisdom and it would captivate people.
The way he dressed, the way women just flocked to him—the whole
thing. It was just devastating magnetic charm, and if he turned it
on, you were cooked. You would do whatever he asked.

And I did it happily. I thought we were committing financial
suicide. We used to spend millions of dollars to put up a
photography show and sell the photos for a thousand dollars. What
we did was not economically wise. Who would do that? But I flew off
the cliff of optimism and just went for for it.

Peter said we have to do this show in Paris at this bookstore La
Hume. I really didn’t know what he was talking about. Why would we
do this show in the windows of a book store?

But we got there, and I see Peter come marching down the street
with 20 people, all carrying ancient taxidermy specimens—including
a baby elephant and a panther—from Deyrolle, this legendary
taxidermy shop. Peter, said “we gotta put these in the windows!”
Just when you think you’re doing a good job, Peter is always like
90 steps ahead of you.

Anthony Haden-Guest,
writer

Peter was very nonchalant about his photography. He acted more
like British people do. He had an incredible eye and he made
wonderful photographs. He told me, “I think the concerned
photographer is the tragedy of photography.” Meaning it was just a
thing he did, it was a hobby. That wasn’t him being
pretentious.

He had two major art forms, photography and his collaged
diaries. Terrific work. When his windmill burned in
1977 he lost many of those. He lost paintings by Picasso and
Francis Bacon. But Peter never complained about it. He didn’t bang
on about it. In that way he had a very European attitude to life,
more than an American one.

In some ways Peter was very wonderfully old-fashioned. He was an
incredible professional, and a superb photographer. Peter was one
of the most unusual individuals I ever met. And he was right on the
button about the environment, wasn’t he? He had a good long
run—it’s horrible what happened, but he died in nature.

Bob Colacello,
writer

I met Peter in 1970, shortly after I’d been made editor of Andy
Warhol’s Interview. Andy had been invited to dinner at the
Algonquin by Peter’s rich uncle, Jerome Hill, one of the magazine’s
initial backers.

Peter arrived with his first wife, Minnie Cushing, who was
carrying a not-so-small snake from Kenya in her straw tote. I was
immediately taken by Peter. Physically beautiful and strong, he was
also possessed of a passion for art, literature and philosophy,
quoting Nietzsche, Blake, and Francis Bacon at will, as if Tarzan
had gone to Yale.

Peter’s creativity was alarmingly boundless and non-stop. Even
in a taxi, he’d be working away on the diaries he kept in large
leather-bound albums given to him by Jackie O—filling pages with
instant collages, glueing images of models ripped out of
Vogue and Bazaar next to his photographs of
African wildlife and landscapes.

It was quite a thrill to have him ask for my phone number and
watch him insert it between Dali’s and Verushka’s. They don’t make
them like that anymore.

Nicolas Rachline,
photographer

I met him in New York in 1989 through Richard Avedon biographer
Steven ML Aronson. If memory serves, Peter greeted me at his
then-agent Peter Riva’s apartment on the Upper East Side wearing a
sarong, a polo shirt, and hand-made African sandals that he would
wear all year-round, rain or shine.

I was producing a documentary on Australian model Elle
Macpherson, and asked Peter if he’d be interested in directing it.
Peter adored women and particularly those he called “Living
Sculptures.” Elle certainly fitted the definition.

We met several times, but nothing really came of these
brainstorming sessions that didn’t included enormously expensive
shoots in Africa and other places. I loved all his ideas, of
course, but feared I would get way over my head with them and never
get it done. But our friendship began then and never ended.

I owned a small house in Bridgehampton, Long Island, and my
friend Randy Schindler, who founded and published Hamptons
Magazine, took me to see Peter shoot for the magazine in his
now legendary Montauk house. Peter was at the height of his
creativity, strength, and beauty and he was, most of all, extremely
generous and humble. He let me film and photograph him without the
slightest hesitation.

Years later, I met Peter again in Paris where the Centre
National de la Photography was holding a massive retrospective of
his work. He was in wheelchair after barely surviving being gored
through the leg by an elephant while shooting in Kenya a few weeks
earlier.

The show was absolutely grandiose, and it was while admiring the
dozens of intricate, elaborate, colorful, sometimes terrifying
collages on photographic prints that I took the full measure of his
artistic genius.

Natalie White, artist

When Peter and I met at Bungalow 8, I had just arrived to New
York City from West Virginia and I didn’t really have a lot of
knowledge of the art world. He immediately asked me to be his muse.
I had no idea what a muse was. He asked to take photos of me and I
asked him if he had a business card, he didn’t. He wrote his number
down on a napkin and we started shooting the next day.

One of our most memorable photoshoots was back in 2009. We were
having dinner at Cipriani downtown. Arturo Di Modica was there and
asked us if we would consider doing a photo shoot on his bronze
Wall Street Bull. Our immediate reaction was yes, let’s do it
right now. Even though it was cold that night I didn’t mind getting
topless on the Bull, it was about getting the shot.

We went down with an entire entourage of people and a friend
hoisted me onto the bull towards the horns. The most memorable part
was buses full of tourists stopped traffic to take photos; it
caused a gridlock. Also Peter’s quote in the New York Post
was priceless: “It’s the only thing I’ve ever done in finance.”

Noel Arakian,
framer

I live about two miles from Peter Beard in Montauk, and I met
him in 1972 when the Rolling Stones were here. They had their shows
at Madison Square Garden, and after their shows they would come out
here to hang out.

One night at a local bar, Shagwongs, that Peter used to go to
all the time, he introduced me to Mick Jagger. I think Keith
Richards was there too. Everyone was drinking a drink called the
White Beach. I think it was vodka and milk. It didn’t stick. It
just seemed like they were relaxing and having a drink.

Soon after that, we started collaborating on making frames for
his pieces. I was in the building business; I had done a lot
of carpentry work. It was really easy to work with Peter. He was a
lifelong friend and a mentor. He was never too intense about
anything. He just thought up different ideas. He just wanted to
explore.

He was so multifaceted, and he lived such a rogue life, wild and
free. Peter was a rascal. He just had this mischievous way
about him. He would duck out of the house and go find friends and
party. He’s a soul that we’re all going to miss—somebody who
touched so many people with his energy and inspiration.

Delphine
Diallo

We met in Paris in 2008 during a charity event for a fashion
luxury band. I was a graphic designer and an art director, and I
was a fan of Peter’s work. When we discovered each other, seated
side by side during the dinner, my surroundings disappeared. We
talked for two or three hours nonstop—we had a lot in common: our
love of life and nature, and creativity. It was a very intense
exchange.

When I was back in New York, Peter called me. I was working on a
job at a production company as a special-effects artist. He said,
“What are you doing in April? What about if I invited you to
Botswana? You’re going to be my assistant and I’m going to
photograph to do some test shoots for the Pirelli calendar.”

We flew to Botswana. That was the most amazing adventure of my
life. It allowed me to see the most beautiful landscapes in the
world, Okavango. We stayed at Abu Camp. The tent was huge, it
looked like a palace inside.

Peter was always waking up super early even if he went going to
bed late. Peter was a machine of work, of creativity. He would do
his collage and write in his diary every day. That was his ritual,
his meditation. I was with him many times when he did it, and it
was very inspirational to see a 72-year-old man keeping the fire
within him.

The post ‘His Creativity Was Alarmingly Boundless’: Friends
and Colleagues Remember the Late Wildlife Photographer and Artist
Peter Beard appeared first on artnet News.