SEA DRIVER 1967
Film producer Kevin McClory takes his wife Bobo Segrist and their family for a drive in an 'Amphicar' across the harbour at Nassau
POP & SOCIETY 1968
From left to right; singer Marianne Faithfull, the Honorable Desmond Guinness and Mick Jagger (of the Rolling Stones)
sit on a sofa under a large gilt framed painting of a woman in 18th century dress at Leixlip Castle, Ireland, the home of Desmond Guinness.
CATHERINE WILKE 1980
. Catherine Wilke joins the topless sunbathers on the island of Capri
JACQUELINE KENNEDY 1959
at the 'April in Paris Ball.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 1959
Lady Daphne Cameron (Mrs George Cameron) on a tiger skin rug in the trophy room at socialite Laddie Sanford's home in Palm Beach, Florida.
MAN'S WORK 1960
Working at his typewriter surrounded by 'bunny girls', publisher Hugh M Hefner at the Playboy Key Club in Chicago. He founded adult magazines, Playboy, VIp and Oui.
NICE POOL 1955
American writer C.Z. Guest (Mrs F.C. Winston Guest, 1920 - 2003) and her son Alexander Michael Douglas Dudley Guest
in front of their Grecian temple pool on the ocean-front estate, Villa Artemis, Palm Beach.
POOLSIDE GOSSIP 1970
A desert house in Palm Springs designed by Richard Neutra for Edgar Kaufman.
Lita Baron approaches Nelda Linsk, right, wife of art dealer Joseph Linsk who is talking to a friend, Helen Dzo Dzo
JOAN COLLINS RELAXES 1955
Film star Joan Collins relaxes with her pink poodle on her pink bed
CHRISTMAS SWIM 1954
Rita Aarons, wife of photographer Slim Aarons, on a lilo in a swimming pool decorated for Christmas, Hollywood, 1954. The Hollywood sign can be seen in the distance.
FUN AT HOMME 1968
Home of Eustquio Escandon and his wife, MariaCusi de Escandon, Acapulco, 1968
GOOD AFTERNOON BEAUTIES 1960
The former Gorge Newhall estate, its house and gardens modeled after Le Petit Trianon at Versailles,
SOCIALITE GRANNIES 1960
The de Young sisters. Left to right, Mrs Nion Tucker, Mrs J O Tobin and Mrs George Cameron,
doyenne of San Francisco society, in the de Young Memorial Museum, circa 1960.
SCONE MADAME? 1960
Afternoon tea round the pool on a cold day at the home of interior decorator James Pendleton in Beverly Hills
“Once upon a time, life was not better. It was different. Once upon a time everything was optimism because nothing was bad for you.
Where is Slim Aarons taking you today? What is it like here, a typical jet set day?
First let me tell you what it isn’t. It is not like any music video you have seen where the men are living large, music blasting, cursing,
yelling, and squirting champagne right from the bottle over Energizer-bunny women lap-dancing near the caviar.
No.
Listen.
The birds. The bougainvillea. Nature’s stillness. Sweet jasmine. The glittering pool. A slow honeybee. What you will notice and
remember most is the exquisite quiet of the rich.
It is your typical jet set day. You wake up around ten and have breakfast in your room, brought to you on a tray; or if you are a
morning sort you go down to the terrace overlooking the pool. By eleven you are sitting at the pool with your host, rehashing what
happened last night: the romances, the wine, the faux pas, any amusing bon mot. You don’t have a cell phone, a laptop, an iPod – they
haven’t been invented yet – so before you’ve come down to the pool you have made your calls efficiently so as not to tie up your host’s
phone line, calling your wife, your lover, your children, your trust officer, your pharmacist…”
-- Christopher Sweet, “A Place in the Sun”
The photographs of Slim Aarons are a journey to the past, depicting a time of glamorous living and relaxed poolside cocktails.
Aarons, born in New Hampshire in 1912, was trained as a photojournalist and served in WW II as a photographer. After the
was Aaron but came into his own photographing for magazines such as Town and Country, Vogue, Life, and Travel + Leisure,
which introduced him to many of his later subjects in upper class American society. It was there that Aarons established his
name as the portrait photographer of the rich and famous. His subjects have included Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Marilyn Monroe,
Guy Vidal, and Kirk Douglas, to name a few.
Aarons’ rich and saturated color images are an intimate peek into the very private lives, to which Slim Aarons was given
unprecedented access in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties. As Aarons himself said, his mission was to “photograph
attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places,” which is exactly what he did.
Slim Aarons died on May 29, 2006, at the age of eighty-nine. His work continues to be exhibited and collected on an
international level.
“Once upon a time, la vita non era meglio. Era diversa. Once upon a time tutto era ottimismo, perché niente ti faceva male.
Dove ti porta Slim Aarons oggi? Com’e’ qui un giorno tipico nella vita di un jet setter?
Prima, fammi dirti cosa non e’. Non e’ come un music video dove si vive alla grande, la musica ad alto volume, urla e risate fragorose lo champagne spruzzato sui corpi seminudi di aitanti ballerine.
Gli uccelli. La bougainvillea. La serenità della natura. Il profumo dolce di gelsomino. La piscina che brilla. Il rumore di un ape. Quello che noterai e ricorderai e’ lo squisito silenzio dei ricchi.
E’ il tuo giorno tipico da jet set. Ti svegli alle dieci e la colazione ti viene servita nella tua stanza, su un vassoio d’argento.; o, se non sei un tipo mattiniero ti accomodi con calma in terrazza. Verso le undici sei in piscina a fare due chiacchiere su quello che e’ successo la sera prima: i romanzi, i faux pas, tutte i pettegolezzi più piccanti. Non hai un cellulare, un portatile, un iPod—ancora non sono stati inventati—quindi prima d’andare alla piscina, hai fatto tutte le tue chiamate in maniera efficace, per non tenere occupata la linea del padrone di casa —chiamando la tua moglie, la tua amante, i tuoi figli, il tuo bancario, la tua farmacista…”
–Christopher Sweet, “A Place in the Sun”
Le fotografie di Slim Aarons sono un viaggio nel passato, documentando i tempi della “dolce vita” americana. Aarons, nato a New Hampshire nel 1912, e’ stato educato come foto-giornalista, servendo anche nella seconda guerra mondiale come fotografo. Dopo la guerra, Aarons ha lavorato per varie riviste come Town and Country, Vogue, Life, and Travel + Leisure, avendo cosi l’opportunità di conoscere tanti dei suoi prossimi soggetti nella classe alta americana. Era li che Aarons ha fatto il suo nome come il fotografo dei ricchi e famosi. I soggetti di Aarons hanno incluso Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Marilyn Monroe, Guy Vidal, e Kirk Douglas, per nominare alcuni.
Le sue immagini, vivaci e saturate di colore, sono uno sguardo intimo nelle vite molto private, dove Aarons e’ stato benvenuto come nessun’altro negli anni sessanta, settanta, e ottanta. Come Aarons stesso diceva, il suo scopo era di “fotografare gente attraente facendo cose attraenti in luoghi attraenti.”
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