Peter Beard: Art Edition, Signed and Numbered 0585, 2006, “This book is copy number 0585 of a worldwide edition of twenty-five hundred copies. Peter Beard, Peter Beard New York, 2006“, Edited by Nejma Beard and David Fahey, Designed by Ruth Ansel. This edition comes in a clamshell box with wood book stand, XXL format.

Born in 1938 in New York City, raised in New York City, Alabama, and Bayberry Point, Islip, Long Island, Peter Beard kept diaries at an early age. He took his first pictures at twelve and photography quickly evolved into an extension of his diaries, as a way to preserve and remember vacations and favorite things. In 1957 he entered Yale University as a pre-medical student, but perceiving humans as the main disease soon switched to art history, studying under Vincent Scully, Joseph Albers, and Richard Lindner.

In 1955 and again in 1960 Beard safaried in Africa with his mother. He took many pictures of the wildlife there and began combining them into collages highlighted by the use of animal blood and remains, to create his work. Beard’s first exhibition was at the Blum Helman Gallery in 1975. Some years later, after becoming close friends with Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa, he purchased a 43-acre farm in Africa. This piece of land was adjacent to her Karen farm in Kenya at the foot of the Ngong Hills- a property which he named “Hog Ranch”. Blixen left him her archive of photographs, as well as some of her personal writings. Beard frequently incorporates these in his collage-diaries.