Peter Beard at home in Montauk.
Image courtesy of Whalebone.
Peter Beard is an amazing photographer and a socialite. He befriended Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger; and Beard was known for his love of nightlife and for his complete eccentricity. Beard spent much of his time in Kenya capturing the local wildlife and retelling the stories of the local tribes. While Beard was not much of a business man, often trading works of art for a dinner bill, his art is now making a big comeback. We particularly appreciate his understanding of the changes that have occurred in Kenya over the past 40 years, as close to the source as he is!
“When I first went to Kenya in August 1955, I could never have guessed what was going to happen. Kenya’s population was roughly five million, with about 100 tribes scattered throughout the endless “wild—deer—ness” – it was authentic, unspoiled, teeming with big game — so enormous it appeared inexhaustible.Everyone agreed it was too big to be destroyed. Now Kenya’s population of over 30 million drains the country’s limited and diminishing resources at an amazing rate: surrounding, isolating, and relentlessly pressuring the last pockets of wildlife in denatured Africa.
The beautiful play period has come to an end. Millions of years of evolutionary processes have been destroyed in the blink of an eye.
The Pleistocene is paved over, cannibalism is swallowed up by commercialism, arrows become AK- 47s, colonialism is replaced by the power, the prestige and the corruption of the international aid industry. This is The End Of The Game over and over.
What could possibly be next? Density and stress — aid and AIDS, deep blue computers and Nintendo robots, heart disease and cancer, liposuction and rhinoplasty, digital pets and Tamagotchi toys deliver us into the brave new world.”
Image courtesy of: Design Father.
Image courtesy of: Photogrist.
Image courtesy of: Afritorial.