http://www.artsy.net/artist/peter-beard 

In November 2013, Peter Beard, born in 1938 so now aged seventy five, suffered a stroke. This information was conveyed to the press by Njema Beard, his wife, manager and the curator of his legacy. For many years there have been rumours of divorce, accusations of Beard’s sexual involvement with his daughter Zara, of whom Njema is the mother, and yet she is still there, still a part of the end of his game, keeping a living memory of what was, is and what will be. And this story: a short yearning for more, and an understanding of life’s defeat.

I do not know Peter Beard; but I have been captivated by his photographs and the stories of his mythological, wild and insouciant life for a long time. Why, his photographs are colonially transgressive, his diaries are a pop artist’s excitement, his decadent and illusive life is enviable? (continue reading…)

OBSESSED WITH A SHADOW
(Obsession: An idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind; a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling. The OED 2013)
You sit at the wooden table in the top half of the house. The house is austere; the house has no shadows but your shadow is in it somewhere. There it is, a shadow as you walk under the light bulb, the only one that shines, it is a dim light and casts an insignificant glow across the cement floor, but not so insignificant as to be unimportant for as you walk underneath it there is a shadow; as you walk passed the mirror in the bathroom there is a dart, the sauntering reflection of some or other figure who you do not know, and yet you do know this personage, you will always know this shadowy somebody.
“Come close, walk next to me.” (continue reading…)

He calls himself Rillke, after the poet Rainer Maria, he has just added another ‘l’ to the name, words are a game,
and this game is a killer, a cryptic clue, he plays with words as he plays with
people, all names, (continue reading…)

A brown dog walks along the sun path, red tongue to the ground, panting. In the brightness of the sun, he sits, on the veranda; (continue reading…)

In the 16^th century, the technological wonderment that is Tokyo, was a small castle town called Edo. In 1603 Tokugawa Ieyasu, a militarily powerful shogun, established his feudal government there and so it became Japan’s political centre. In1868, during the Meiji Restoration, the emperor moved his capital from Kyoto to Edo. He renamed it Tokyo, the Eastern Capital.

Tokyo today is Tokyo: blazing violent electric stars, (continue reading…)