Peter Beard climbed inside a crocodile’s mouth, creating one of the most iconic and bold self-portraits of the artist. This “living, breathing work of art" was crafted while spending time photographing in the Koobi Fora region of Kenya near Lake Rudolf (also referred to as Lake Turkana), which had contained the largest population of Nile crocodiles. Beard was studying the African crocodile population when he came across this 15-foot 4-inch reptile.

Peter Beard (1938–2020) was an American photographer best known for his documentary images of Africa arranged in unique photo collages that combine painting, drawing, and text. Part documentarian, part activist, Beard’s work captured the plight of a continent succumbing to industrialization. “The wilderness is gone,” the artist had said, “and with it much more than we can appreciate or predict. We'll suffer for it.” Born on January 22, 1938 in New York, NY the artist and diarist was educated at Yale University, studying art history with the famed abstract painter Josef Albers. After moving to Africa in the 1960s, Beard began to catalog the demise of elephants and rhinoceroses in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park. In 1975, while living in Nairobi, Beard spotted a beautiful university student named Iman. The photographer later brought her to New York, launching her career as a supermodel. Over the course of his career he collaborated with Andy Warhol, Richard Lindner, Francis Bacon, and others. Sadly, Beard died in April 2020 at the age of 82 after disappearing from his Long Island home and was found after an extensive, 19-day search effort.