Post # 5 : Life Changer

By 1973, Iman was 18 and a student of political science at the University of Nairobi. She also worked as a translator to help pay her tuition costs. Photographer Peter Beard, a well-known figure in the fashion world, saw her one day on a street in Nairobi and was captivated by her long neck, high forehead, and gamine grace. He began following her, and finally approached her to ask if she had ever been photographed. "The first thing I thought was he wanted me for prostitution of naked pictures," Iman recalled laughingly about that day in an interview with Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service writer Roy H. Campbell. "I had never seen Vogue. I didn't read fashion magazines, I read Time and Newsweek. " But when Beard offered to pay her, she reconsidered, and asked for the amount due to the college for her tuition, $8,000; Beard agreed.

Beard shot rolls of film of Iman that day, and took them back to New York with him. He then spent four months trying to convince his "discovery" to move to New York and begin modeling professionally. He even leaked items to the press about her fantastical beauty, and exaggeratedly claimed that she was descended from African royalty and that he had "found" her in the jungle. Another story alleged that she was a goat herder in the desert. When Iman finally capitulated and flew to New York, dozens of photographers greeted her at the airport. A press conference that day initiated her into the vagaries of celebrity and fame. "I was very surprised and offended that they could be so gullible to believe that all Africans come out of the jungle," Iman told Campbell. "Somalia is a desert. I had never even seen a jungle. And I was even more insulted when they started asking the questions and talking only to Peter because they thought I did not speak English and I could speak English and five [other] languages."