Peter Beard - Photographs New York Tuesday, April 4, 2023 | Phillips
  • Peter Beard’s work embraces the majestic brutality of Africa, and portrays his beloved adopted home with his own distinct visual vocabulary. In the current work, as well as lots 90-92, unique embellishments by the artists of the Hog Ranch Art Department ornament Beard’s images creating a heightened experience, one that documents both the fierce beauty of Africa and the urgent need to protect it.
     

    What is vividly apparent is that Beard’s work is an epitaph to noble beasts. His photographs are scientific documents infused with picture clues and conundrums, riddles, personal jokes, quotations – visual keys to a very real puzzle of survival and longevity. Once described as “Odysseus with a camera,” Beard was a visionary whose powerful work continues to resonate long after its creation.

    • Provenance

      Pablo’s Birthday, New York, circa 2005-2006

    • Literature

      Taschen, Peter Beard, vol. 1, p. 223 (variant)

87

Elephants Memory, Marsabit, Kenya N.F.D.

1972
Gelatin silver print with applied watercolor, tempera paint, and original drawings by the artist E. Mwangi Kuria of the Hog Ranch Art Department, executed later.
19 5/8 x 23 5/8 in. (50 x 60 cm)
Signed, titled, dated, and extensively annotated in ink on the recto and in the margins.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$60,000 - 80,000 

Sold for $107,950

Contact Specialist

Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs
skrueger@phillips.com


Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com

Photographs

New York Auction 4 April 2023