A page from Peter Beard’s journals, quoting Karen Blixen, the author of the 1937 memoir *Out of Africa,* whom Beard befriended late in her life.

*Roping Rhinos with Ken Randall in Hunting Block 29,* photographed by Beard, 1964.

*Top,* *Elephant Embryo, Uganda,* by Beard, 1966; *above,* *Masai Watotos near Loliondo,* 1964.

An archival photograph of Blixen, incorporated into one of Beard’s collages.

*Bongo (or Ndongoro), Mount Kenya Forest,* 1966.

*Berserk Rhino on Lariak After Killing Four Cows and Herdboy.*

*Jomo Kenyatta, Who Has Pledged Respect for the Animal Heritage of His Country,* 1962.

*Top,* *Karen Blixen’s African Farmhouse and the Ngong Hills—Scenery from* Out of Africa; *above,* *Spitting Cobra, Mortally Wounded, Ever Vengeful, Tsavo Before the Die-off,* 1972.

*Boran Woman at Marsabit Hospital,* 1968.

*Top,* *Kilima Kirinyaga, “Ke-nyaa,” with Its Twin Peaks Mbatian and Nelion, Named by Sir Halford Mackinder, the Diamond Glacier, Bed of Ngai, Lies Between;* *above, Lion kill; a Zebra That Ran to the End,* 1960.

*Tereri, Larsili, Bryan Coleman, and Cow Buffalo, Minutes after Bryan Was Run Over by a Wounded Bull.*

*Game Control: Zebra Carpet at Ol Morani, Lariak Estate Owned by Gilbert Colville, Laikipia, Kenya NFD, August 1960. The Spoils of Game Control—Domestic Stock Still Taking Precedence over Wild Game.*

*Larsili, the Wandorobo-Masai Hunting Genius.*

The Wild Life of Peter Beard

His 1965 book, The End of the Game, sounded an early warning about Kenya’s wildlife crisis. Six decades on, its haunting photographs look more prophetic than ever

Peter Beard was a Renaissance man in a safari jacket: an artist, a sometime actor, and an heir to tobacco and railroad fortunes. He was a fixture on Long Island’s East End, summering in the 70s at the East Hampton home of his then girlfriend Lee Radziwill, and holding court for decades at his own compound in Montauk. He was an unstoppable party animal for whom day and night were interchangeable, and an incorrigible ladies’ man who once climbed Mount Kilimanjaro on acid with a mistress while his wife waited at home. He would marry three times.

But Beard was best known as an explorer and photographer. He first traveled to Africa at 17, assisting Quentin Keynes, the adventurer and great-grandson of Charles Darwin, on a film about rare wildlife. So struck was Beard by what he saw that he returned during his final year at Yale, having persuaded the university to let him mail back diary entries from Kenya in place of a conventional senior thesis.