Peter Beard: Fifty Years of Portraits

"We are living in the age of the photograph. Everyone is familiar with a camera and how a photograph represents its subject. When we pose for a portrait, we present ourselves for the camera. Yet to capture something beyond what is visually presented is always the photographer's most difficult task. Peter Beard has this ability, naturally. He collaborates with his subjects, utilizing the immediate environment and objects around him, the mood or ambiance, and always quietly hoping for a lucky break or accident. His shooting sessions are loosely choregraphed like a happening, performance or cocktail party, for example." "These dramatized "creative play periods" of portrait-making bring about his exploration of the experience, or as Francis Bacon says, "the sensations of the moment". The searches for truth, or a glimpse of another reality. The pictures themselves become secondary to the process of making them. Beard's subject matter has always been his life before his eyes. As the Mexican writer and poet Octavio Paz said, "Reality is not what we see, but what we discover." Peter Beard is on a voyage of discovery. " David Fahey Los Angeles, April 1999