A photo exhibit, The End of the Game – The Last Word from Paradise, Revisited opened at the ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery in Buffalo. Friday, 9 October 2015. Photos by Orin Langelle.
 

2015 is the 50th anniversary of artist Peter Beard’s book, The End of the Game – The Last Word from Paradise. Beard spent many years in Africa documenting the impact of Western civilization on elephants, other wildlife and the people who lived there.

In the early 60s Beard worked at Kenya’s Tsavo National Park, during which time he photographed and documented the demise of over 35,000 elephants and 5,000 Black Rhinos. In the 1965 edition of The End of the Game he ended with a chapter of hope for the future. That chapter has been pulled. To use a chess metaphor, are we now at End Game?
History does repeat itself:

“For centuries these bow hunters lived, and lived well, among the elephants and rhinos. A natural order was established – coexistence – symbiosis! They all were surviving nicely, in balance until the white man came along to save them. The whites staked out protective boundaries, arrested the hunter-gathers and upset the balance. Concentrated populations of reproducing pachyderms overpopulated and overate their food supply. Disaster was then at hand.” –Peter Beard

That’s basically what Indigenous Peoples have been saying for centuries when the colonizers came for gold, silver, other metals. forests and souls.

Beard’s controversial views on ecology then, are just as relevant today.  It seems like not many people are listening.

Seizing land is what the UN will try to achieve soon at the Paris climate conference is part of their binding deal to combat climate change. It actually is a false solution which will make some people a lot richer but will be a disaster for Indigenous Peoples, all of us, and will destroy ecosystems and biodiversity. 

On the ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery exhibit:

Beard spent many years in Africa documenting the impact of Western civilization on elephants, other wildlife and the people who lived there. In 1977 Beard had the first one-person show at Manhattan’s International Center of Photography, The End of the Game – The Last Word from Paradise.

Over four months, Orin Langelle photographed Beard and the people, many celebrities, that were part of Beard’s life prior to and during the exhibit’s installation and the subsequent opening, plus Beard’s 40th birthday party at Studio 54 in January of 1978.

 
Langelle’s photographsare of events surrounding Beard’s 1977’s The End of the Game – The Last Word from Paradise. The The ICP installation consisted of Beard’s photographs, elephant carcasses, burned diaries, taxidermy, African artifacts, books and personal memorabilia. In the early 60s Beard worked at Kenya’s Tsavo National Park, during which time he photographed and documented the demise of over 35,000 elephants and 5,000 Black Rhinos.
 

With the support of the Peter Beard Studio, ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery presents this exhibition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Beard’s book, The End of the Game – The Last Word from Paradise. The book, soon to be released, can be ordered from Taschen.