From Our Archives: Peter Beard
Peter Beard, Roping Rhinos with Ken Randall in Hunting Block 29 1964/2015.
Peter Beard, the renowned wildlife photographer and artist, died this week at the age of 82. Here’s our interview with him from Musée Magazine Issue 15: Place.
ANDREA BLANCH: You helped put Montauk on the map in the 1970s—what did it mean to you, both as a sanctuary and a place that bred wild behavior and brought so many icons (Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, Jack- ie Kennedy Onassis, and many others) together?
PETER BEARD: In the 1920s, my father used to go to Montauk to fish. I grew up on ocean beaches, South Hampton, and fresh air. It has always had great appeal for me. In the early 70s, Paul Morrissey and I put our heads together and got his permission to organize Eothen for Lee Radziwill and myself. At the time, I was also working on my book, Long- ing for Darkness. Jackie was the editor, and Andy loved being around when Jackie came to visit. The Stones came a little later. Being right on the ocean, Montauk has always been a refuge away from the stress of New York City. Where we were had the reputation of being “the dead end” of Long Island, and we were right there at the end, feeling very lucky.
ANDREA: You’ve mentioned in the past that you see your habit of scrapbooking as a “total waste of time” and that “small minds have big collections.” In retrospect, has your attitude towards your scrapbooking habit changed?
PETER: Well, I don’t feel that way. That was just a quick answer. It’s just something one says when one does not want to say something specific, but actually, for me, working on my diary gives me immense pleasure. If you use things like bark and plants and things that you find—objets trouvés— you can get a mixture of original systems, and that’s the way I like to go. I’m more of a collector of memories.
Peter Beard, Rhinoceros.
ANDREA: Your work focuses on nature and capturing natural states, but your work is also, on the other hand, very tactile and layered—what about the process of alteration/layering and collage is attractive to you?
PETER: I don’t have a program, but I thoroughly enjoy that—getting all the pieces together and hoping that they fall in an orderly way. The writing is part of it, the dots are part of it, and the humor of the Hog Ranch Art Department’s artistry goes with my photographs.
ANDREA: You use ink and blood in your collages. How did the practice of using blood in your collages come about? Is all of the blood you use your own blood?
PETER: Well frankly, I’ve always used blood. It’s better than paint, and has an absolutely amazing quality of its own. You have to dry it in a certain way, you have to smudge it when it’s necessary, leave it alone when it can’t be touched. Basically, when you’re in Africa, you can get blood anywhere. Here, unfortunately, there are so many rules. And you know, in my Taschen book, if you look at some of those drawings, full page, it’s all done with blood. It’s good if you let it be. If you push it too much, it’s a mistake. In Africa, you can find blood easily, it’s everywhere. “Das Blut ist ein ganz besonderer Saft.” (Blood is a very special juice).
ANDREA: You photograph wildlife, both in the natural and unnatural/fabricated human world. And sometimes, you photograph these worlds together. How do these two worlds inform each other, and inform your work?
PETER: I don’t really consider myself a photographer. Photography is an easy way of amalgamating a great deal of subject matter to an artwork. If the wildlife is there, I’m going to be photographing it. I’ve done Veruschka and all sorts of things with Vogue. I don’t consider myself a fashion photographer either, but I think anybody can be. You just have to have excellent-looking girls and an attitude that is fresh and different so it doesn’t look like what everybody else is doing. When you go out into the field, if you come across an elephant or a rhino, or something dies, it’s luck!
ANDREA: You’ve mentioned that we (human beings) are part of the destruction of the environment, and yet we are the only ones who can appreciate its beauty. How has this paradox informed your work?
PETER: “I thought of the long ages, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course—year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while, on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy.” – Alfred Russell Wallace
ANDREA: You’ve once described art as anything that enhances life. Would you define art the same way now?
PETER: Yes. Whatever is life-enhancing.
ANDREA: Last year was the 50th anniversary of your book The End Of The Game—have we learned anything as a society since then about our relationship to the environment? Or are we only getting worse and more igno- rant about exploitation?
PETER: We are beginning the end of the natural world. Humans are the disease. We need to take a seriously close look at what we’re doing.
Peter Beard, Elui with Tusk 1962/2006.
ANDREA: Photography as a medium is full of happy accidents. How did you learn to benefit from accidents?
PETER: Have a couple of drinks and just go at it.
ANDREA: You include writing and poetry in many of your collages. Do you like to write? How does that relate to your photography?
PETER: My work is generally a narrative; it is a commentary on the world. I use writing and poetry to emphasize the point I am making about a particular image.
ANDREA: Which writers’ voices do you relate to and draw inspiration from?
PETER: R.D. Laing, Dick Laws, Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Joseph Conrad, to name a few.
ANDREA: You’ve mentioned that it’s important to be “in touch with what’s out there”—on that note, what do you think about technology’s impact on our society? Is it making us more connected to each other and aware of the world, or is it intensifying our disconnect from it all?
PETER: Well, that’s a loaded question, because obviously there are many great advantages that come with technology, but there are also great disadvantages. These can be seen in things like the youth generation not knowing how to talk or relate to each other on a personal level. Everyone is glued to their phone. It’s actually very depressing.
ANDREA: Creativity, and creation, seems to be a constant state of being for you. What do you consider a day well-spent?
PETER: Walking the beach, collecting rocks, spotting whales and seals, finding things to put in my collages...bones worn by the ocean, driftwood, horseshoe crabs...swimming...
