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PETER BEARD: SCRAPBOOKS FROM AFRICA AND BEYOND
Directed by: Guillaume Bonn & Jean-Claude Luyat.
Released by Palm Pictures.
Language: English.
Country of Origin: France. 54 min. Not Rated.
DVD Features: Interview with director Guillaume Bonn. Peter Beard gallery. Narrated by: Charlotte Rampling.

As if his enchanting photograpy weren't reason enough to create a documentary about him, Peter Beard also belongs to that community of irresistibly charming and intriguing artistic personages, to which someone like say, Andy Warhol, could claim membership. This is why this otherwise overly-long 1998 TV documentary works. Another reason why the viewer remains wide awake and engaged is the narration by Charlotte Rampling – subtle and sparse. The majority of the film takes place behind Peter Beard's extravagant photo shoots in Kenya and beyond. From the exhilarating raw primordial African landscapes to the flawless nudity of beautiful models, Beard applies the same high-caliber aesthetic touch. And as the camera puts the viewer behind Beard's own photographic lens, the former becomes privy to the photographer's unique perspective.

By marrying two seemingly polarized worlds, what one would otherwise label art vs. commercialism, Beard obliterates these labels and resists stereotypes. He is asked by the interviewer what it's like to go from the extreme of photographing dead carcasses in Africa to rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous, the likes of which have included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Mick Jagger. Beard refuses to dwell on the subject long – for him these divergent worlds are easily reconciled. Beauty is the common ground that unites all art.

And beauty the photographer certainly knows how to capture. The photo shoots taken in Africa are absolutely jolting, and the film succeeds primarily because of the viewer's sensation of actually being there and experiencing the land himself. But even more riveting, perhaps, is Beard's own persona – a seasoned intellectual (he graduated from Yale) and somewhat of a philosopher. At one point, he expresses his dismay with modern Western society: we're sucking all the juices out of the earth to get money to fight diseases that nature wants us to have.

Another element that makes this film worth watching? Footage of a drunk Francis Bacon expressing his views on life in really skewed French. Parisa Vaziri
August 28, 2007