Wild: The Life of Peter Beard: Photographer, Adventurer, Lover

by Graham Boynton

Overview

Graham Boynton's Wild is the definitive biography of photographer Peter Beard, a larger-than-life icon who pushed the boundaries of art and scandalized international high society with his high-profile affairs.

He was the original 20th century “enfant terrible” with the looks of a Greek god who blazed like a comet across the worlds of art, photography, and fame. The scion of several old WASP fortunes, he was by instinct an adventurer, and the more dangerous the escapade, the better: whether he was hunting big game in Africa, ingesting epic quantities of drugs, or pursuing the most beautiful women in the world. Among his friends were Jackie Onassis, Andy Warhol, and Francis Bacon. When Peter Beard died in 2020 after mysteriously disappearing from his Montauk home, he remained an enigma to even his closest friends.

Journalist and author Graham Boynton was a friend for more than 30 years, spending time with Beard at his bush camp in Africa, in London, and at his Long Island home. From hundreds of Boynton’s interviews with Beard’s closest friends, former lovers, and fellow artists comes this intimate portrait of a man Sir Mick Jagger called “a visionary.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250274991
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/11/2022
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	430,653
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

GRAHAM BOYNTON was raised in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and later emigrated to South Africa, where he attended Natal University and worked as a journalist. In 1975 he was expelled from South Africa because of his opposition to apartheid. He worked for many years as a journalist in London before translocating to New York where he worked for a decade for Conde Nast as a writer and editor. Since 1998 he has lived in London working as an author and newspaper and magazine journalist. He is the author of The Last Days in Cloud Cuckooland.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Going Up Was Worth the Coming Down 1

1 Montauk 2020-When the Lions Stopped Roaring 7

2 Dynasty 22

3 Into Africa 37

4 Beginning of the End of the Game 51

5 Conservation Wars 65

6 Salon in the Bush 80

7 Let's Spend the Night Together-Those Montauk Summers 96

8 The Beautiful Americans 111

9 Out of Out of Africa 128

10 Of Man and Nature 151

11 The World of Moi 166

12 The Time Was Always Now 182

13 Elephant Memories 198

14 Enter the Governess 212

15 The Artist as Exhibitionist 225

16 On Sleeping Eyelids Laid 238

17 Stress and Density-Surviving the 2000s 253

18 Who Shot Natalie White? 272

19 Sorry About All the Bullshit, Man 289

20 The Prisoner of Thunderbolt Ranch 300

Epilogue 313

Acknowledgments 317

Selected Bibliography 321

Notes 323

Index 333

Editorial Reviews

12/12/2022

Travel editor Boynton (Last Days in Cloud Cuckooland) recounts the life of his close friend Peter Beard (1938–2020), a “brave and completely crazy” adventurer and African wildlife photographer. Beard, born into old money, was described by his own mother as the “most uncooperative boy she had ever met.” At 17, he traveled to Kenya with Quentin Keynes, Charles Darwin’s great-grandson, where he spent months with colonial African conservationists and emerged with “a burning passion for Africa.” Boynton recounts Beard’s years of bohemian adventures while he lived on a 40-acre plot of land in Kenya named Hog Ranch (such as the time he was nearly crushed to death by an elephant), fighting for animal preservation and taking photographs of African wildlife. As well, Boynton touches on Beard’s lavish fashion shoots for publications like Vogue, where he worked with supermodels such as Veruschka and Iman. Beard emerges as a man of contradictions, and a “much-loved character who was apparently capable of heartlessly abandoning old friends and colleagues without a second thought.” Boynton captures Africa’s spirit along with an expert character sketch, making this as inspiring as it is provocative. Readers will relish this account of a one-of-a-kind life. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

A dishy biography…delectable.” –The New York Times

"A thoughtful and well-researched exploration of how the art emerged from the life." -Wall Street Journal

“In this densely researched portrait, Boynton vibrantly captures the mercurial nature of a spectacular, exuberant, insatiable, and committed adventurer, photographer, and artist.” —Booklist

“Boynton captures Africa’s spirit along with an expert character sketch, making this as inspiring as it is provocative. Readers will relish this account of a one-of-a-kind life.” –Publishers Weekly

“An engrossing account of an elusive artist.” –Kirkus Reviews

“Gripping... racy... plenty of drama.” –The Spectator

“A riveting portrait of a man of adventure who truly knew no boundaries in life, love and art.” –Tina Brown

“[Boynton] does a masterful job of assembling the facts of Beard’s chaotic life and conveying the volcanic energy of the man, even as he makes a strong case for his achievement as an artist.” –Jay McInerney

“The definitive account of the life of a truly wild man.” –Simon Winchester

“In this magnificent biography Graham Boynton gives us a picture of a life that could have been scripted jointly by Blixen and Hemingway. A brilliantly enjoyable read – a triumph.” –Alexander McCall Smith, bestselling author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

“Boynton teases out the complexities and contradictions that made this heir of railroad money a fascination to English royals and African guides alike…beautifully written, fast and fun, Wild has colorful characters on every page. The most compelling is Beard himself, pinned to the page in this first account since his most dramatic death.”—Michael Shnayerson, Vanity Fair contributing editor and author of Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art

From the Publisher

10/01/2022

Journalist Boynton (The Last Days in Cloud Cuckooland) explores the life of photographer Peter Beard. Born into wealth and white privilege, educated at Yale, Beard used his connections and charisma to conjure opportunities for himself, one of which was traveling to Africa in 1960. Inspired by Karen Blixen's tales of colonial Kenya in Out of Africa, Beard spent time on safari taking photographs, which culminated in his 1965 monograph, End of the Game. He accepted assignments to photograph models in the African bush for glossies such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Beard was characterized by a compulsive recklessness, and he gives the impression that he had a colossal sense of entitlement. According to Boynton, he never picked up a tab and frequently bartered his work to pay off bar bills. Beard's artistic process is never truly illuminated, and the tales of his endless appetite for drugs, booze, bedding young models, and nightclubbing grow tiresome, especially as he enters his dotage. Beard's wife isn't portrayed in a favorable light either. VERDICT Beard's lifetime of excess and negligence toward the maintenance of his body of work complicates his artistic legacy, which is made clear in this biography. Still, many readers will be intrigued.—Barrie Olmstead

Library Journal

2022-06-25
The over-the-top life of a famed wilderness photographer, conservationist, and enigmatic adventurer.

An artist’s life and work are often intertwined; in the case of Peter Beard (1938-2020), the distinction was especially blurred. Boynton, a journalist and longtime friend, valiantly attempts a balanced perspective, yet the scale often tips in favor of his progressively chaotic existence. A descendent of two prominent American families, Beard was inspired by early trips to Africa and the writing of Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen). After acquiring property in Kenya in the early 1960s, he would focus much of his attention on the African wilderness. “His work, his passions, his reference points,” writes Boynton, “all have their origins in the African continent, and they were formed in that short time in Kenya’s disappearing wildlands.” Beard established himself as a gifted and fearless (sometimes reckless) wildlife photographer, and his photographs, particularly of African elephants, captured the escalating destruction of the vast wilderness. Earning acclaim for his first book, The End of the Game (1965), he also became enamored with the nightlife of New York City. With his high-society lineage and movie-star good looks, Beard attracted some of the most glamorous figures of his generation, including the likes of Mick Jagger, Jacqueline Onassis, and Truman Capote. He was married three times, and supermodel Cheryl Tiegs was his second wife. Through decades of partying, heavy drug use, and increasingly erratic behavior, his notorious escapades frequently eclipsed his creative output. Though Boynton offers due diligence to the process of Beard’s work and tracks the important milestones, we never quite get a handle on how he progressed as an evolving artist. Still, the author is convincing in his assertion that Beard will be best remembered for his work: “His place in history…will be determined not by his personal popularity, his nonstop drug ingestion, his serial womanizing, or his passionate defense of the wilderness but by his artistic legacy, and that part of his life remains the most difficult to accurately assess.”

An engrossing account of an elusive artist.

Kirkus Reviews