On DVD: Peter Beard: Scrapbooks from Africa and Beyond

Directed by Guillaume Bonn and Jean-Claude Luyat

Starring Peter Beard

Palm Pictures brings us this DVD release about the career of Peter Beard, a photographer as well known for his fashion work as his pictures of Africa. Directed by Kenyan photographer Guillaume Bonn, we see how both sides of the man are merged together to create art that is uniquely his own.

The Movie

Peter Beard’s first major magazine cover was in 1963, a beautiful black and white picture of an elephant for Life. From there his career snowballed, capturing stills of animals and natives across Africa and often seeming to look for the beauty in death, which he refers to as “the other side of life.” Beard says that his fashion photos aren’t about fashion and he emphatically insists he isn’t a professional photographer because the professionals ignore the importance of the subject matter in the work and to him that is everything. Beard’s career spans over half a century and has work has appeared numerous times in magazines such as Harper’s, Elle and Vogue. This documentary, which lasts less than an hour, never explains his jump from exploring Africa through photography to using Africa as a backdrop for fashion models.

Beard’s fascination with the people of Africa is almost ironic. Well-known in the fashion industry, having gala shows in New York, two huge homes on two continents that are filled with valuable paintings by artists such as friends Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon, yet he says he has an “existential admiration” for nomadic Masai who “carry nothing through their lives” He claims to avoid contrivance in his work, but Bonn shows us a fashion shoot a model being chased by spear-wielding villagers for Elle magazine and natives in tribal gear being photographed while the rest of the villagers stand behind Beard in shorts and t-shirts. We also watch Beard as he takes a shot of a makeup man fixing a model’s hair while one of the natives stand by, a moment that adds to the irony as he takes an unstaged picture of the contrived.

There are moments when Beard himself seems to be a performer in the show, sometimes working as if he knows the camera is watching him. He introduces the documentary team to a baby named after him and has one native repeat for the camera how he thinks of Beard as a brother. We learn very little about his early life and only briefly meet his wife and daughter. The film does discuss his friendships with celebrities such as

the aforementioned Warhol and Bacon and author Karen Blixen, whose books were partially responsible for Beard’s relocating to Kenya. Overall, what we see in the film are a series of quick glimpses of his life and work, each with a story behind it that we have to assume or interpret. Like vignettes. Or photographs.

The documentary touches briefly on Beard’s experimentation in other creative mediums, from having once been an actor to his love of painting.  We watch him with one of his many diaries which are thick works of paint, sketches and pasted montages. We see images of him on the ground, smearing paint on giant sheets around his photos and even having a jeep with painted wheels drive over his work. He does this in front of the camera as well as his audience in the room, giving the experience an almost performance art quality.

Beard appears to be a man in love with himself, and he can’t be blamed for that. He is charming and charismatic and everyone seems to be his friend. His true character shines through at the most uncontrived moment of the film, when he is attacked and nearly killed by a raging elephant then remains calm and cool and in good spirits as he is rushed to a hospital four hours away. Another filmmaker might have used this as a pivotal moment in the life of his subject, but here it becomes an incident like any other. Later, he is the same charming explorer of beauty he was before, as if facing death didn’t change him because he was already happy with who he was.

In the end, the documentary is about a man whose body of work is like one of his diary montages, pasting together parts of the things he loves most: Africa, beautiful women, and himself. The perfect contrast of modern beauty to a land that hasn’t changed for thousand of years makes each work uniquely beautiful and uniquely Frank Beard. The documentary is too short, but this works as an advantage as it may whet your appetite to see more of Beard’s work rather than be overwhelmed by it. We learn less than we’d like about the man behind the camera and little about how he does what he does. We don’t know if Beard is a man creating art that crosses the boundaries of two worlds or is using natives to sell clothes, because, after he says he feels no guilt about using them, the question is never addressed again. As the film ends we are left with only one undeniable fact: the pictures are beautiful.

7/10

The Video

The film quality varies greatly, as different cameras are used in different indoor and outdoor settings, but overall the quality was excellent. Some shots may seem to cut away too quickly but at no time is the film unwatchable. There is very little older footage and even older photographs are displayed clearly.

8/10

The Audio

The audio is mostly clear and crisp, although there are moments where too many people are talking at once. Subtitles are supplied for some of the tribesmen whose English isn’t very clear for us.

8/10

The Packaging and Bonus Features

The clear standard amaray case shows a photo of Beard rather than of his work, but is it an excellent action shot of him in water as he is doing what he must to get the perfect shot.

The bonus features include previews of other Palm Pictures selections, a talking head interview with the director Bonn and a photo gallery of shots taken by Bonn during the filming. I was disappointed that the there wasn’t a gallery of Beard’s work, but the photos by Bonn shows he is an excellent photographer in is own right. The interview is informative, but the lack of variety of shots makes it a little dull, although he gives a good eyewitness account of Beard’s elephant attack.

6/10

Overall, this documentary was not so much a story of a man’s life but more of a visit with him and an overview of his life’s work. Clocking in at about 53 minutes, we see a little of this and a little of that but, like a series of family photos showing smiling faces in front of landmarks, we know we’ve missed out on much more by not being there ourselves. I hope that, in the future, there will be a longer and more intimate film about the man and his work.

Overall (Not an Average) 7/10

The Movie 7/10

The Video 8/10

The Audio 8/10

The Packaging and Bonus Features 6/10

Overall (Not an Average) 7/10

Fred Grimm