Peter Beard (1938 – 2020) was born in New York and took his first pictures at the age of twelve. In 1957, he enrolled at Yale University as a pre-med student, but soon switched his major to art history, studying under Vincent Scully or Joseph Albers.

He went to Africa in 1955 and 1960, and after graduating from Yale, he returned to Kenya in 1961. He met Karen Blixen in Denmark, the author of Out of Africa, Shadows In the Grass, and Gothic Tales through his cousin Jerome Hill. After working several years at Kenya’s Tsavo National Park, where he documented over-population and a massive die- off of over 35.000 elephants, Peter Beard published his first book in 1965, The End of the Game.

In 1977, he had a solo exhibition at the International Center of Photography that featured photographs of both living and dead elephants and cabinets filled with stuffed wild animals, artifacts, books, and memorabilia. During this period, he collaborated with many of the era’s greatest artists including Andy Warhol, Terry Southern, Truman Capote, and Francis Bacon and made his first steps towards fashion photography, bringing Iman, then completely unknown, to the United States and launching her career as a model.