Slim Aarons, the photographer who captured the high society having fun
Slim Aarons has built a career documenting the lives of the rich and beautiful.
Working for publications like Town & Country, Harper’s Bazaar and Life magazines, the late photographer spent five decades capturing captivating, unobtrusive images of the nobility and society. Whether strolling in villas in Italy, sailing off the coast of Monaco or hunting foxes in the English countryside, his subjects are the epitome of high society – and money. neck.
“He’s a reporter,” Waldron said by phone from New York. “You’d have to think a lot of these pictures were made on a mission. He was sent somewhere to document what was happening at that particular place.”
Heiress Nonie Phipps poses with friends in Biarritz, France, 1960. Credit: Slim Aarons / Getty Images
Image agency Getty Images acquired Aarons’ entire archive in 1997, several years after he retired. Waldron, who is also the Getty curator, says that so far only 6,000 of the roughly 750,000 images have been digitized.
At the time of the acquisition, Aarons was “forgotten” and “unpopular,” Waldron added. But now, some 15 years after his death, experts and audiences are revisiting and reinterpreting the photographer’s vast work in its entirety. With social media allowing today’s airline bookers to tightly control how their private lives are depicted, his oeuvre offers a candid and fresh look at an era that has passed. via.
And while Aarons moves effortlessly through society’s most exclusive circles, he’s retained his objectivity and remains “very grounded,” Waldron said.
“He’s obviously become close to some of these people,” he added. “He photographed subjects as they went out into society and then photographed their children decades later. These are long-lasting relationships… but he’s also very (very) private. and always keep that professional distance.
“He was constantly going from place to place, but he always came home to his little ranch in Westchester County, New York.”
Olivier Coquelin, who opened America’s first discotheque, and his wife, Hawaiian singer and actress Lahaina Kameha. Credit: Slim Aarons / Getty Images
Style, not fashion
Aarons may have spent half a century surrounded by affluence, but his fixation on glamor can be traced back to his experiences of poverty and war.
Still using his birth name George Allen Aarons, instead of his later nickname Slim, he escaped poverty by joining the military as a photographer in his early 20s. Serving in the Second World War, he honed his skills not in polo matches or billiard parties, but in military maneuvers, including fierce Allied assaults against against Italy at the Battle of Monte Cassino. The photographer then “unraveled” his experiences, but they stayed with him, Waldron said.
Kleenex heiress Jim Kimberly (far left, orange) chats with friends on the shores of Lake Worth, Florida, in 1968. Credit: Slim Aarons / Getty Images
The photos also show the evolution of luxury fashion over the decades, from post-war looks to patterned 1990s ski jackets. But while Aarons does do some work. In his usual fashion shoot, early in his career, he shied away from the standards of the genre. Never using a stylist, and often carrying little more than a camera and a tripod, he doesn’t identify the magic attached to fashion photography, says Waldron.
Waldron said: “Fashion photography is about creating a story and a model and acting on it… but Slim doesn’t want to do that. “He cares about who they really are – not just what they’re wearing, but what they’re driving, where they’re going to have dinner afterwards. It’s about all the different parts that make up the style. It’s something that he’s really connected to.”
Here comes what Waldron describes as the difference between fashion and style – between the transient and the timeless. Indeed, Aarons showed no interest in the wardrobe of his subjects or the trends of the day.
“I don’t do fashion,” the photographer once said. “I made people who wear their clothes fashionable.”