Peter Beard the celebrated photographer and legendary Lothatio is dead
The body of Peter Beard, a celebrated artist, adventurer and photographer was found on Sunday, April 19 in a densely wooded area near his Montauk, New York home.
Peter Beard the celebrated fashion and wildlife photographer has died at the age of 82, his body was found near his beach cottage in Montauk, New York. He suffered from dementia and vanished from his home three weeks ago
The inveterate partier with a penchant for extraordinary pranks was 82-years-old and suffering from dementia when he wandered away and vanished from his home 19 days ago – his friends still held out hope that he was pulling off one of the ‘greatest’ April Fools jokes of his life.
‘We are all heartbroken by the confirmation of our beloved Peter’s death,’ said the family of the life-long naturalist in a statement, adding, ‘He died where he lived: in nature.’
Beard became just as famous for his erratic and highly publicized love life as his artistic career that spanned six decades and resulted in a massive body of work.
His own curious oeuvre is an eccentric combination of photography, collage and scrap booking that collided in the worlds of fashion, fine art, and animal conservation.
Along the way, he earned the reputation as an adventurer and infamous playboy with scores of famous friends and lovers: Lee Radziwill, Candice Bergen, Cheryl Tiegs, Truman Capote, Mick Jagger, Francis Bacon, Jacqueline Onassis and Andy Warhol, who were all enamored by the man described as ‘Half Tarzan, half Byron.’
Beard is pictured above next to a book of his portraits in 1999. His famously chiseled face (seen on the cover of his book) and rakish good looks earned him a conga-line of admirers both men and women. In the end, it was his infamous womanizing, hard partying and unapologetic drug use that made him a regular subject of gossip columns
Charming, smart and well educated, Peter Beard was once described as ‘half Tarzan, half Byron.’ He was the ‘black sheep’ of an illustrious New York family and the heir of a railroad fortune. After graduating from Yale in 1961, he purchased a 45-acre property in Kenya from Isak Dinesen (author of the 1937 memoir, Out of Africa) where he snapped some of his most famous portraits over the course of his career
Beard was a life-long friend of Jacqueline Kennedy- Onassis and her sister Lee Radziwill after he spent a summer on Aristotle Onassis’ private Greek island, Skorpios. Lee Radziwill, a former paramour of Beard’s said that he possessed ‘extraordinary charm.’ Radziwill was still married to her second husband, the Polish Prince Radziwill when she pursued a passionate affair with Beard in the early 1970s. Years later she said: ‘I think he has a split personality: He can walk through Lake Rudolf in Africa and then—well, he came to my book party in April looking better than anybody else’
Cheryl Tiegs was the world’s highest paid covergirl when she married Peter Beard in 1982. The couple split after just 11 months. She later said: ‘Peter was the passion of my life, but he had serious bipolar [disorder]. He would be fuzzy-wuzzy warm, cuddling for five days. I did not know he was depressed on those days. Then he would spring into action, bounce off the walls and not come back for a day or two. That is not a marriage’
Full of enthusiasm and brimming with curiosity, Beard led a life of adventure with ground-breaking work foremost published in Vogue Magazine, among other fashion bibles. He felt most at home on his 45-acre spread in Kenya named ‘Hog Ranch;’ where he used wild giraffes, elephants, crocodiles and lions as props.
One of his best-known photographs features a model named Maureen Gallagher who stood naked while feeding a giraffe in the African bush at night. ‘I went there for three weeks and stayed there for three months. I cancelled all my bookings. I was 22, and I was in love,’ said Gallagher who carried out a 16-year-long affair with Beard afterwards.
Beard toured with the Rolling Stones for their 1972 Exile on Main Street album with Truman Capote who had been hired to follow the band for Rolling Stone Magazine.
‘Beard had an easy rapport with celebrities and soon became one himself,’ wrote Town & Country Magazine: he was a fixture of Andy Warhol’s Factory and Studio 54. He was a close friend of Salvador Dali and a muse to the artist Francis Bacon, who painted him over 30 times.
Beard spent summers touring the Mediterranean on Aristotle Onassis’ yacht with Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis and her sister Lee Radziwill. He hosted DuPonts, Mellons, Rockefellers, Bianca Jagger and Uipath Exam dumps the Yugoslavian Princess at Hog Ranch. Later, he famously launched Iman’s career as a supermodel after he discovered her walking down a street in Nairobi, she went on to marry David Bowie.
Beard purchased the last house on Montauk Point as a refuge between time spent in New York City and long stints in Africa photographing wildlife. His closest neighbor was friend and art collaborator, Andy Warhol, who wrote in his diary: ‘Mick arrived so drunk from an afternoon with Peter Beard and Francis Bacon that he fell asleep on my bed’
Beard is pictured with Caroline Kennedy at Studio 54 in 1978. He babysat Jacqueline Kennedy’s children when they visited him in Montauk and taught them how to use a camera
Peter Beard pictured on his 40th birthday in 1978 surrounded by leggy models at Studio 54. The party which was attended by Caroline Kennedy, Halston, Bianca and Mick Jagger, Truman Capote and Andy Warhol was complete with a giant elephant shaped cake that descended from the ceiling
Beard was married three times, first to the socialite Mary ‘Minnie’ Cushing in 1962 and later to the model Cheryl Tiegs before settling down in 1986 with Nejma Khanum, the daughter of an Afghan diplomat with whom he had one daughter named Zara.
‘He lived life to the fullest; he squeezed every drop out of every day,’ said his family in a statement.
Born in 1938, Peter Beard grew up in New York City’s affluent Upper East Side in a lavish nine-room apartment decorated with Daumier and Corot paintings. He was the black sheep of an illustrious family and heir of two massive fortunes: his maternal great-grandfather was James Jerome Hill, founder of the Great Northern Railway while his paternal grandfather was Pierre Lorillard, a tobacco magnate who invented the tuxedo and established the wealthy enclave of Tuxedo Park, New York.
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‘I was a robot,’ explained Beard of his childhood. ‘I went to every single school my father went to. I had it all handed to me. I was just too spoiled.’ He told Vanity Fair that his mother ‘suffered from lack of education and the disease of conformity. Her day would be ruined if you didn’t have a clean suit on.’
After attending Pomfret School in Connecticut, Beard enrolled at Yale in 1957 where he switched his pre-med studies to art history.
‘It soon became painfully clear that human beings were the disease,’ he later said. When Beard was 17, he made his first trip to Kenya accompanied by Charles Darwin’s great- grandson, Quentin Keynes and was instantly infatuated with the country.
After graduating in 1961, Beard went back to Africa and befriended Karen Blixen, a coffee-plantation owner who famously wrote her memoir ‘Out of Africa’ under the pen name, Isak Dinesen in 1937. He purchased 45 acres of land abutting the farm once owned by Dinesen (a woman who he cited as one of his biggest influences).
In 1965, at the age of 27, Beard published his first book, ‘The End of the Game,’ – it was a monolith comprised mostly of his photographs that documented the vanishing romance of post-colonial Africa with its untamed savannas abundant with big game struggling to survive. His visceral black and white portraits of alive, dead and dying animals stunned audiences accustomed to the Walt Disney variety of cute talking cartoons.
Beard discovered Iman while she was walking on a street in Nairobi and launched her career as a supermodel after he offered to pay for a whole year of her tuition at Nairobi University if she agreed to be photographed. She was the daughter of a diplomat and doctor, a political science student fluent in five languages but before taking her to New York he curated a more fanciful story for the papers: ‘He says he found me with goats and sheep—that I was some kind of shepherdess in the jungle! I never saw a jungle in my life.… But Peter lives in a fantasy world. He loves the idea of being my Svengali’
Beard danger with reckless abandon. He was charged at by a rhino, he swam in crocodile infested waters, he witnessed friends attacked and eaten by wildlife and almost nearly died himself after he was impaled by an elephant tusk, he had lost so much blood that doctors couldn’t find a pulse. He said that Africa was the most ‘real’ place in the world, ‘you don’t get the thrill in the United States anymore; you get the lawyers. I’m like everyone else, except I just like to have a little more excitement than boredom’
He showcased the starving elephant population in the Tsavo East National Park who had bettered the available food supply and were dying by the thousands. Ariel shots revealed the ravaged Kenyan landscape littered with elephant skeletons.
Beard argued for the selective culling of elephant herds, a position that conservationist are vehemently opposed. He called himself a ‘preservationist,’ because he said: ‘Conservation is for guilty people on Park Avenue with poodles and Pekingeses.’
Peter Beard stands in front of two of his originals. Beard’s grandfather Pierre Lorillard invented the tuxedo and founded the wealthy NY enclave known as Tuxedo Park
Though he maintained homes in New York City and Montauk – Africa was his adopted country. On Hog Ranch, he lived in a tented compound among the wild beasts he documented daily with complete disregard for caution.
He thought nothing of swimming in crocodile-infested waters, he witnessed friends attacked and eaten by wildlife and almost nearly died himself after he was impaled by an elephant tusk that required a lengthy operation to piece his pelvis back together using external braces that were pinned to hipbones through the skin. He was bleeding to death and had no pulse when he arrived in the operation room.
Whether celebrating his birthday at Studio 54 with an elephant cake that descended from the ceiling or home on his ranch in the wilderness of Kenya – Peter Beard’s lavish lifestyle drew in hordes of followers from the demi-monde, beau monde and literati who were enthralled by his wild antics with a mixture of fascination and horror.
‘He brought a sense of urgency and flamboyance into their lives,’ wrote his long-time friend, Graham Boynton in a tribute to Beard on Air Mail.
He relished in controversy and was unapologetic about his predilection for drugs, alcohol and beautiful women. ‘The last thing left in nature is the beauty of women,’ he told Vanity Fair in 1996. The writer who visited Hog Ranch for the profile observed: ‘Leave Beard alone for a few minutes and women materialize around him like mushrooms after a heavy rain.’
Beard’s lifelong passion for photography was sparked in childhood after he received a camera as a gift. Later his artwork broadened to include fashion photography, painting, collage and scrap booking. Years later, after he had already earned his reputation as a celebrated snapper, Beard told Vanity Fair: ‘Photography is such a retard profession, and the people in it are such parasites on technology…All this technical equipment, dozens of crew—it’s complete bulls***. It destroys the magic’
Vogue magazine editor Diana Vreeland and supermodel Veruschka attend the opening of Peter Beard’s exhibition of photographs from Africa in New York on November 11, 1975. Always surrounded by models, Beard was Veruschka’s favorite photographer and he was a longtime friend (rumored lover) of Lauren Hutton and friendly with everyone from Janice Dickinson to Paula Barbieri
Peter Beard is pictured with Mick and Bianca Jagger’s daughter, Jade after he traipsed across America with the Rolling Stones for their Exile on Main Street tour in 1972. He was also accompanied by Truman Capote who was writing a story to go along with Peter’s photographs for Rolling Stone Magazine
As recent as 2013, when he was well into his 70s, his long suffering-wife of 34 years, Nejma Beard, had him thrown in a psych ward for stumbling home to his family’s New York City apartment at 6am with two Russian prostitutes that he met while partying at a nightclub in the Meatpacking District.
When it came to drug use, Beard was known for his ever-present marijuana joint, unless other more alluring substances were available. He explained: ‘I’ve met so many wonderful people on coke. I have nothing bad to say about it. I really enjoy coke.’
‘One of his great attractions is his enormous passion and enthusiasm for whatever he involves himself in,’ said the late Lee Radziwill, who left her husband the Polish Prince Radziwill to pursue a love affair with Beard in the early 1970s. She added that Beard possessed ‘an extraordinary charm.’
Women and men alike were captivated by Beard’s charisma and entranced by his boyish, rugged appeal. He was a socialite with elegant manners and a sense of rebellion that appealed him to the every-man.
As a young man, he was downright, ‘dashing’ claimed Vogue Magazine. ‘Peter was one of the most beautiful men in the world,’ said Barbara de Kwiatkowski, a former model who found herself embroiled in social scandal when she left her husband for Beard, who was then dating Radziwill. ‘He should have been a movie star,’ she said to Vanity Fair in 1996.
‘There’s nobody like Peter. He’s full of enthusiasm, laughter, and soul, with beautiful manners. I think he has a split personality: He can walk through Lake Rudolf in Africa and then—well, he came to my book party in April looking better than anybody else,’ said Radziwill.
Bob Colacello, who was the editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine told Town & Country: ‘I met him at a party and he talked to me for hours and hours about Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.’ He recalled, ‘He was absolutely mesmerizing, and when I told Andy about it, he said, ‘Oh, you’ve fallen for him, too.’
Beard was celebrated for creating his own curious brand of art where he embellished his photographs with paint, ink and blood. He framed his pieces with meticulously curated rocks, seashells and other found objects. In 2017, his photograph titled Orphaned Cheetah Cubs sold at Christie’s auction house for $672,000
She later told Vanity Fair: ‘He’s an artist; he does not live in society; he doesn’t play by their rules. He’s like a wild animal. He doesn’t own a pair of socks; in winter he’s wearing sandals and sloshing around in the snow. He would rather have grand disasters than just have a mediocre life’
Fragments of Beard’s outsize life are distilled in his densely adorned diaries that influenced both Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon. It was a habit that he began in childhood, though ‘scrap booking’ doesn’t adequately explain the overstuffed journals chaotically layered with ephemera from his everyday life from photographs to news clippings, matchbooks, doodles, mantras, cigarette butts, rodent skulls, to-do lists, candy wrappers, toe-nail clippings, bird feathers, cocktail stirrers, poems, rocks and blood smears (a common medium for Beard).
These collages entries eventually evolved into larger pieces that were shown in Paris and well received by the arbiters of taste in the art community.
In 2017, his photograph titled Orphaned Cheetah Cubs sold at Christie’s auction house for $672,000. Despite a lifetime of critical success, Beard constantly found himself broke and on the brink of bankruptcy.
‘People think I’m rich, but it’s a very meager trust fund I’ve got; I’ve always just survived. It’s amazing that I have gotten through without total bankruptcy,’ he told Vanity Fair.
Often times he bartered his work to settle outstanding debts he had with friends and bar tabs around Montauk.
Peter Beard, ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev, and Lauren Hutton (rumored lover) are pictured at one of Beard’s art exhibits in New York City
Beard is survived by his wife Nejma (right) and daughter Zara (left). Their statement in the wake of his death read: ‘He died where he lived: in nature’
‘Peter is not a commercial person,’ said Iman. ‘That’s his beauty and that’s his downfall. He’s an artist; he does not live in society; he doesn’t play by their rules. He’s like a wild animal. He doesn’t own a pair of socks; in winter he’s wearing sandals and sloshing around in the snow. He would rather have grand disasters than just have a mediocre life.’
Beard, the last of adventurers, is survived by his wife Nejma and daughter Zara. He left behind a massive body of work, though some might argue that his resplendent life is a work of art on its own.
Perhaps his most important legacy is in his conservation work. His family wrote that ‘He was a pioneering contemporary artist who was decades ahead of his time in his efforts to sound the alarm about environmental damage.’
He spoke of the Africa he fell in love with on his first visit as a young teenager. ‘It was paradise, believe me. This was one of the heaviest wildlife areas in the history of the world, and now it’s a parking lot.’
‘People think you’re a whiner or a complainer if you mention it, but the speed with which we destroy nature is overwhelming, and we adapt to the damage we cause with unbelievable cunning.’
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