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Last modified on Wed 29 Apr 2020 15.28 BST
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Peter Beard, 1961
Beard was born in New York, but fell in love with the African wilderness as a young man, moving to Hog Ranch in Kenya to work. All photographs: © Peter Beard/courtesy
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Karen Blixen and Kamante Gatura, Rungstedlund, Denmark/Renguti Village near Nairobi, Kenya, 1961-62
Beard lived next door to Danish author Karen Blixen, whose account of life in Kenya became the acclaimed Hollywood film Out of Africa
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965 Elephants, Tsavo National Park, Kenya, 1976
Beard’s first photobook, 1965’s
The End of the Game, laid bare the fate of thousands of starving elephants. It feels remarkably prescient today
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Living Sculptures at Lakeside, Ferguson’s Gulf, Lake Rudolf for Eyelids of Morning, The Mingled Destinies of Crocodiles and Men, 1968
According to the Guardian and Observer’s photography critic, Beard saw Africa as ‘the ultimate escape as well as a kind of vocation’
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Mick Jagger, 1972
Beard partied with the likes of Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger and Jacqueline Onassis during his return visits to New York
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Single Cheetah, 1960/2007
Beard combined photographs, journal text, dried leaves, newspaper cuttings and even animal blood to forge his own unique style
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Iman in the Hog Ranch Studio Loo, Kenya, First Photos, April 1975
Much of Beard’s best work was produced while working at Hog Ranch. His photographs can now sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars
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Francis Bacon on his roof at 80 Narrow Street, London, March 1972
Beard would pose for Francis Bacon on his visits to London. Bacon painted several portraits of him
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Detail of Window for ‘Oltre la Fine del Mondo’, Milan, Italy, 1997
Beard once said of himself: ‘I don’t mind the word “dilettante”. A dilettante means someone who does what he loves’
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Convalescing TV Shots, 1996, with Samburu Woman Detail, 2000
Beard regularly swam in crocodile-infested rivers and was once gored after being trampled by an elephant – he almost died of his injuries
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Ode to Yves Klein, Peter and Zara Beard, Montauk, 1993
A man who craved adventure right to the end, Beard was once described by the writer Bob Colacello as ‘half-Tarzan, half-Byron’
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Turkana Girl, Lake Rudolf, 1987
Beard will be remembered as a daring photographer who sounded the alarm about human beings’ destruction of the natural world
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