Making dead elephants speak: photographic ‘truth’ and ethical conflict in Peter Beard’s The End of the Game

Peter Beard’s The End of the Game (1977) sparked controversy among conservation biologists over its portrayal of the 1971–72 Tsavo National Park elephant die-off. Critics accused Beard of misrepresentation, citing selective imagery and factual omissions shaped by his advocacy for culling, while supporters defended its evocative portrayal of Africa’s ecological crisis. This article explores the ethical and epistemic tensions at the heart of this debate by analyzing Beard’s ‘dead elephant’ photographs in relation to contemporaneous scientific studies and interviews with biologists involved in East African wildlife management. It also considers the ongoing relevance of the controversy to contemporary environmental photography. Rather than resolving the debate between factual precision and interpretive meaning, the article shows how The End of the Game exemplifies the ethical ambiguities that arise when environmental photography merges documentary aims with aesthetic and rhetorical strategies. The book’s reception and legacy highlight how such strategies may amplify symbolic and emotional resonance, but also risk distortion, alienation, or resignation in the face of ecological catastrophe. Notably, the Peter Beard Estate declined permission for the photographs under discussion to be reproduced with this article.