Peter Beard at work on a diary in his bedroom tent, Hog Ranch, 1990
I met Peter Beard over 30 years ago when our paths crossed both at his home at the end of Montauk Long Island and in New York City’s late-night watering holes. Born and raised in New York City, Peter, now 76, splits his time between New York City, Montauk, and his beloved ranch in Kenya.
Peter is recognized for his iconic photographs of African game often juxtaposed with beautiful women. He is also known for creating photo collages, or “diaries,” incorporating newspaper clippings, smeared animal blood, dried insects, bones, and other found objects.
It would be inaccurate to describe Peter as only an artist. He is a world traveler, documentarian, chronicler, flâneur, and a master of narrative in writing and artwork. He applies his very special worldview to whatever he undertakes — be it a fashion shoot, touring with the Rolling Stones, or recording our current history in his daily diary-making.
Over the past 25 years Peter has shared his life with his wife and partner Nejma and their daughter. Peter has written many books on his experiences in Africa. 2015 will mark the 50-year anniversary of The End of the Game, his prescient first book documenting the history and future of African wildlife focusing on the over-population, over-grazing, and massive die-off of more than 35,000 elephants in Tsavo National Park. The destructive impact of overcrowding in the world is a theme constantly revisited in his work.
On February 20, 2014, I met with Peter to learn more.
Eric Goode: OK let’s start with Africa. What first drew you to Africa?
Peter Beard: When I was 16, I read Karen Blixen’s seminal book Out of Africa, and shortly afterwards I had the opportunity to go to Africa with Darwin’s great-grandson.
EG: Really?
PB: Yes. My friend’s mother was Darwin’s granddaughter. My friend helped me get my hands on Africana books. I collected everything I could and he helped. Then he led a group of us through Cape Town and up through the national parks. He is in my book — you know the white rhino charging, that is a photo of him.
PB: I personally deeply feel that we have swept Darwin under the rug and that is why the earth is in deep shit. We are so far from nature. We act like enemies of nature.
EG: What led you to purchase your property in Africa?
PB: On a return trip to Africa in my twenties after finally meeting Karen Blixen, I purchased Hog Ranch, which was 45 acres adjacent to her property.
EG: Where exactly is your ranch?
PB: The ranch is located in the Ngong Hills just outside of Nairobi. The property had a solid population of warthogs, which is why I called it Hog Ranch.
EG: So you did the majority of your life’s work in Kenya. Do you remember when my sister Jennifer Goode went to your ranch in Kenya in 1988 to kick heroin? She was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s girlfriend at the time. How did that come to be, do you remember?
PB: I remember. I think it stemmed from our office parties.
EG: I don’t think you were even there, but she stayed at Hog Ranch and she kicked her drug habit.
PB: Of course, I remember.
EG: You were generous, always, to a fault. She broke up with Jean-Michel Basquiat, who had a deepening heroin addiction, and you gave her refuge for a week. As you know, Jean-Michel died later that year from a drug overdose.
EG: You knew Michael Rockefeller?
PB: We went to school together. We were the heads of the art department at the Buckley School. After Buckley, we went our separate ways; I went to Africa and he went to New Guinea.
EG: I thought you were waiting for him in Kenya.
PB: I was waiting for him to visit me in Kenya and he never made it.
EG: And he went to New Guinea by himself and he … disappeared.
EG: You went to Yale? What was your major?
PB: For some reason I started in pre-med — but did a quick turn toward art and art history.
EG: I got expelled from my high school.
PB: That’s a blessing; they gave you a real blessing.
EG: But at least you made it through? Bill Gates and Steve Jobs never even finished college.
EG: How do you characterize yourself, Peter? People define you and your work in many different ways.
PB: A dilettante originally, was someone who did what they liked.
EG: But you’re someone who lived his life like that. Have you ever done anything just for money?
PB: Yes, I did. I worked for lots of magazines. I used to work for Condé Nast. And I got $400 a month or something like that.
EG: Those were the Veruschka years in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. I know people ask you, but did you really discover Iman?
PB: Iman loves to say that her parents discovered her. But frankly, yes, I discovered her on Standard Street in Nairobi.
EG: (laughs) OK. And she was how old?
PB: She was around 21.
EG: Peter, when you were born there were about 2 billion people on the planet. And now there’s over 7 billion. In the blink of an eye, in less than one lifetime …
PB: Whew … In Kenya it went from 5.5 million when I first arrived to over 40 million now. Population pollution! It’s overwhelming and it’s everywhere.
EG: Sometimes I think we are like lemmings all running over a cliff.
PB: Humans are taking over everywhere in the world, so I really can’t complain about people ruining Africa. But it went from the Pleistocene to a parking lot.
EG: Blunt talk about population growth makes a lot of people uneasy.
PB: You know one of the reasons I think that population pollution has gone viral is because people didn’t understand population dynamics and why it goes viral, increasing at an increasing rate. People also don’t want to hear you messing with any population. This is my theory …
EG: No, you have to be careful how you say it …
PB: This is a global problem! We should be on it night and day.
PB: Did you know that Darwin spent 12 years studying barnacles, when Alfred Russel Wallace was studying local wildlife, including the bird of paradise, in Indonesia?
EG: I think that today’s extinction crisis became evident when you were photographing big game in Africa. I think the crisis is catching up with us.
PB: Hundreds of species a year.
EG: Even plankton, the little stuff, is disappearing. We always talk about the polar bears and elephants, which are incredible animals, but often forget the smaller creatures. That’s why I do turtle and tortoise conservation. We forget about all the small but critical life forms. Plankton provides us with half of our oxygen.
PB: How about everything? Did you read about Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction?
EG: No, but I do believe we are experiencing a sixth extinction.
PB: Of course! Well, she defined it well in her book.
EG: And this is obviously the only manmade extinction.
PB: Well, yes, the book is coming out right now. It was in The New Yorker where I read it first. Now the book has come out, which is a much more in-depth version.
EG: Tell me about some of your iconic photos? How did you get to do crocodile culling?
PB: Yes, I was involved in a population dynamics survey for the game department and I had to cull crocodiles. This study formed the basis of the book that I wrote with Alistair Graham in 1973, Eyelids of Morning: The Mingled Destinies of Crocodiles and Men.
EG: Why did they have to kill so many crocodiles?
PB: We had to control the population.
EG: So people wouldn’t be eaten?
PB: I saw part of a crocodile’s head, and he looked like he was stalking these kids. And I thought I got him, and I was aiming for him. And I had to dive for it because they are usually still moving; you know it’s quite deep there.
EG: You dove for it?
PB: Yes, there was no flicker. And I dove down, and I came across this big scaly thing, but I couldn’t see one inch in front of me. I kind of felt him up and there was a little crease where the bullet went into his head. Luckily the bullet scraped and dove down and I picked his brain with my fingers until I was convinced he was dead. The Africans were too scared to go swimming, so I got under this croc — it weighed a thousand pounds, and got it close enough so they could get it out of the water. It was an ordeal. Fifteen feet and over a thousand pounds!
EG: What was the story about the dead man in the box? You have a photo of legs in a box.
PB: That’s a photo of a Peace Corps guy who I told not to go swimming. He was immediately eaten. We rescued his legs out of the guts.
EG: You were there? You were with this guy?
PB: Yeah. I was on Lake Rudolph where it happened.
EG: You mention killing or having to shoot crocodiles. What other animals did you have to cull? You seem to have chronicled these sorts of mass slaughters, in a sense. You documented the slaughter of Olive Ridley Sea Turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) in Mexico and of the big tuna off of Montauk. What did you think of the photo of Donald Trump’s son killing all these animals in Africa? It was a pretty gross display …
PB: In all fairness hunting does have a purpose. It’s a way of utilizing. It takes the oldest, who are going to die anyway. You’re going for a big trophy so you go for the old and infirmed. Yeah, you can’t rule hunting out even as a conservation tool.
EG: Tell me how many close calls you’ve had personally?
PB: (laughs)
EG: Obviously in ‘96 you got trampled by an elephant.
PB: That messed me up big time. The tusk went through my leg and hip. I was declared clinically dead at the Nairobi airport from bleeding out during the long drive. The operations took six hours, but I came back to live another day.
EG: The elephant was in ‘96?
PB: ‘96 was the elephant. They were supposed to be filming me.
EG: When that happened?
PB: The camera guy could have filmed the rarest shot: an elephant trampling a human.
EG: But he didn’t capture you being trampled?
PB: He ran! He was in no danger whatsoever! I was the one in danger.
EG: You were born in NYC and eventually bought property at the end of Long Island in Montauk.
PB: I lived in the back of a Chevrolet station wagon when I was buying Montauk. It was very difficult because I didn’t have enough money. I gave 10,000 dollars here and 10,000 dollars there. It was only 125,000 dollars to purchase.
EG: So you bought your place in Montauk in the ‘70s?
PB: Uh-huh, ‘71.
EG: And how much has that land changed over the past half-century?
PB: (laughs) Horrendously … the galloping rot is headed our way.
EG: The what? The galloping rot from South Hampton?
PB: Well from New York City, really.
EG: (laughs)
EG: When I was at your place about 10 years ago I found a Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina) on your property.
PB: We used to see them on the road all the time. Of course they were common. But they’re no longer common.
EG: So little things are disappearing in Montauk?
PB: I’ll tell you what’s disappearing; it’s those wonderful little birds …
Nejma Beard: Pheasants have gone. I don’t see pheasants anymore.
PB: Pheasants for sure, but also those little birds with the little beaks … Woodcocks! I used to see those on the road all the time. I haven’t seen one in years.
EG: Right. When you bought Montauk you were really a pioneer.
PB: Now it’s a real estate deal.
EG: Montauk?
PB: I would say the Hamptons. The whole goddamned thing. It’s an unbelievable pity. And more the pity that the turtles and wonderful little birds are gone.
Peter Beard feeding giraffes, Hog Ranch, 2014