Peter Beard : Art Edition, No. 251-2500 (Limited edition)

"Beard Bared" is a stunning journey into the world of Peter Beard.

Photographer, collector, diarist, and writer of books Peter Beard has fashioned his life into a work of art; the illustrated diaries he kept from a young age evolved into a serious career as an artist and earned him a central position in the international art world.

He was painted by Francis Bacon, painted on by Salvador Dali, and made diaries with Andy Warhol; he toured with Truman Capote and the Rolling Stones, created books with Jacqueline Onassis and Mick Jagger - all of whom are brought to life, literally and figuratively, in his work.

As a fashion photographer, he took Vogue stars like Veruschka to Africa and brought new ones - most notably Iman - back to the U.S. with him. His love affair with natural history and wildlife, which informs most of his work, began when he was a teenager.

He had read the books of Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) and after spending time in Kenya and befriending the author, bought a piece of land near hers. It was the early 1960s and the big game hunters still led safaris, with all the colonial elements Beard had read about in Out of Africa still characterizing the open life and landscape, but the times were a-changing.

Beard witnessed the dawn of Kenya's population explosion, challenged finite resources, and stressed animal populations - including the starving elephants of Tsavo, dying by the tens of thousands in a wasteland of eaten trees - and documented what he saw in diaries, photographs, and collages.

He went against the wind in publishing unique and sometimes shocking books of these works.

The corpses were laid bare; the facts were carefully written down sometimes in type, often by hand, occasionally with blood.

Spilling out over the pages of this massive tome, Peter Beard's collages are reproduced as a group for the first time at the size they have always meant to be seen, many of them as foldouts.

Hundreds of smaller-scale works and diaries fill the remaining spreads - magnified to show every detail, form Beard's meticulous handwriting and old-master-inspired drawings to stones and bones and bits of animals pasted to the page.

The book comes complete with wooden stand ? and is a work of art in itself. It also includes a bonus companion book, featuring extensive interview with the artist and personal photos, many of the never-before published.

All colour illustrations are colour-separated and reproduced in Pan4C, the finest reproduction technique available today, which provides unequalled intensity and colour range.