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

I found Peter Beard. I'm a bow hunter and retired NYC fireman I am Dave Schleifer .I read Wild by Grahm Boynton this season while bow hunting. My kindle is stocked full of Non-Fiction for the hunting season. This book was one of my favorite reads. I have a new respect for Peter Beard his artwork his life his compassion for nature and the life he enjoyed.. The above picture is the woods where Peter Walked on his last few hours on Earth the night he died. I finished this book in a tree stand he walked by. RIP Peter Beard. Fantastic Read buy this book. Dave Schleifer

Who was Peter Beard? The question may best be answered by his medical diagnoses or described by his crazy, somewhat pathological behavior, which never really changed. When you spend five months in the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Hospital in your early 20s, you’re probably not headed for a life of copacetic normality. Peter was stunningly beautiful and clearly bipolar. He also possessed some talent as a photographer. How much talent is debatable. And the behavior of his wife in attempting to corral his excesses while micromanaging his estate makes me completely disinclined to acquire any of his work. I suspect this book will have limited appeal. Like its subject, it’s just out there in left field.

People, even people viewed by the world as successful, a man of the world, and a love of the ladies, are filled with contradictions. A man of his word, except to the wives he betrayed, a hunter who discussed conservation, on his terms. A nature photographer who was in demand as a fashion photographer. Born of wealth who could not pay for meals. Peter Beard was all of these things. Beard's life was one of adventure, and traveling in the highest levels of society, who might only have been truly happy in a hunting camp taking photos. Graham Boynton captures the life of this man in the book Wild: The Life of Peter Beard: Photographer, Adventurer, Lover, which gives a portrait of this man as astonishing and truthful has the photographs Beard was famous for.Peter Beard won the lottery on almost everything. Beard had looks, confidence, poise and the background and connections that in America get a person, even a mediocre person far. Beard was far from mediocre. After a year in England which gave him both the manners and attitude that would help him mingle in high society, Beard went to Yale where a chance meeting opened his life to the one thing that he never seemed to have stop loving, Africa. A trip there changed his life, instilling him a love in the continent, and the wildlife. Soon he was hunting and taking photos, his book The End of the Game showed a country that was slowly changing, one that friends did not want to see go. Fashion photography got him money, and friends like Mike Jagger, Andy Warhol, and Studio 54 comrades, along with a supermodel wife, his second and a lot of casual girlfriends. With his thrid wife came a bit of stability, until illness began to slowly weaken him.A big brassy book about a very big man. Boynton was a longtime friend of Beard, and friends were not things that Beard kept easily. A book like this could easily be a hagiography, but Boynton is quick to point out mistakes, and bad things that Beard did, and to properly list the things he did right. Beard's life really does read like a fictional take on a character from the 1960's even the 1930's. The writing is good, and never drags in any places. As Beard ages, and dementia and stroke symptoms begin to slow Beard down, the book still finds ways to impress on readers just what a person Beard was.A fascinating look a life that seems so large, so not of this day anymore. A life so big that it in many ways seem fictional. Big game hunter, fashion photographer, married to one of the first supermodels. This is all the stuff of superheroes or even P. G. Wodehouse characters. For fans of biographies about people who lived life by their own terms, no matter who got hurt. And for fans of photography and artists who really did suffer in many ways for their art.

What drew me to the book, was the fact that Peter Beard was a photographer, and when I looked up his art, I like the creativeness of it, but as I read the book, I found most of it was something that I could not relate to.Peter Beard lived a very self-indulgent lifestyle, with little regard to others.The author, who knew Beard, was able to give us the many sides of his life. Peter lived in New York, but he loved Africa and spent much of his time there, doing good and bad at the same time. From working in Conservation, to being very reckless around the animals, endangering himself and the people that were around him.He didn't seem to care about the value of his work in the beginning, always trading his art-photography for things he owed, drugs, flights, meals, hotels, you name it.He was like a magnet for women and even when married he couldn't stop the womanizing. Maybe they thought he would be able to progress their careers, or maybe he did have that “je ne sais quois”.I think a lot of people will like the book, as it is well written and fast paced, full of a glamorous lifestyle, and he had a lot of famous people as friends.I wish I could have related to it, but at least it had me searching the internet for things that I read about.

Peter Beard was larger than life from his exceptional talent as a photographer, to his love of Africa, and beautiful women. He visited Kenya as a young man and fell in love with Africa, perhaps his most enduring love affair. He married three times, but he couldn’t resist taking many lovers. He was the life of the party, but could never seem to pay his bills and often touched his friends to pick up meals and hotel bills.There was also a dark side. He took drugs and drank to excess. He may have had an undiagnosed mental illness for many years. However, in his later years it manifested as depression and eventually dementia. His death was almost as iconic as his life, wandering off from his home in Hamptons to die in a forest and not be discovered for days.The author was the perfect person to write this biography being a friend to Beard for many years. He tells all the amusing and dangerous stories, but he also manages to make Beard come to life as a complex individual. I enjoyed this book. If’s fun to read because of the famous people and incidents, but it also leaves you thinking about the man and how he lived an exceptional life.I received this book from St. Martin’s Press for this review.