The American photographer Slim Aarons (1916-2006) is known for documenting the jet set and high society from the 1950s through the 1970s. His most famous photograph, “Kings of Hollywood,” shot on New Year’s Eve, catches Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart enjoying a round of cocktails at a Beverly Hills bar. An exhibition at the New York’s Staley Wise gallery features over thirty color and black-and-white photographs, many of which have never been published before, showing party scenes, natural portraits and the ambience of a luxurious vacation.
The beautiful, the rich and the powerful were always Aarons’ favorite subjects. He summed up his approach like so: “Photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.” Many of his photographs were published in the glamour magazines like Life, Holiday and Town & Country, the same magazines that conveyed the image of a prosperous and privileged America whose elites were treated like royalty. We see Dali, JFK, Mick Jagger, Truman Capote, Louis Armstrong and Marianne Faithfull. Some sunbathe, others sit poolside, and the rest are on African safaris or dancing at impromptu concerts in Rome or the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. From Palm Beach to Palm Springs, from Mustique to Monaco, from Aspen to Gstaad, it’s the playground of the wealthy where all that matters is kicking back and relaxing.
Like his elder Cecil Beaton, the photographer of the British bourgeoisie, Slim Aarons rose to the rank of something like a court photographer. This selection of photographs instills in the viewer a feeling somewhere between fascination and disdain. But photographing the rich can turn out to matter just as much historically as showing compassion for the poor. For example, take this incredible 1956 photograph of the Count of Paris, “pretender to the throne of France,” seen with his family on the lawn of the Manoir du Coeur Volant in Louveciennes. Or the one with Truman Capote in his Brooklyn Heights apartment in 1958. While Aarons’ work in reportage can seem somewhat conventional, there’s no doubt when looking at his portraits that his sense of composition and sincerity made him a skilled observer.
EXHIBITION
Slim Aarons: A Man for All Seasons
From May 9th to June 28th, 2014
Staley Wise Gallery
560 Broadway
New York, NY 10012
USA
T + 212-966-6223
F + 212-966-6293
