For decades, Slim Aarons photographed a world most people only imagined from the outside. Born in New York City in 1916, Aarons served as a combat photographer in the Second World War and was awarded a Purple Heart. He came home with a clear ambition. He would spend his career photographing, in his own words, "attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places." That decision produced one of the twentieth century's most seductive bodies of work. On assignment for Holiday, Life, and Town & Country, Aarons documented the postwar leisure class at play. He worked beside the pools of Palm Springs, on terraces above the Mediterranean, and in the villas of the international set. His photographs are never stolen or candid. They are composed, sun-drenched, and quietly aspirational, a form of environmental portraiture that took glamour seriously as a subject. His signature images have entered the visual language of the last century. Poolside Gossip, made in Palm Springs in 1970, and Kings of Hollywood, his 1957 New Year's Eve portrait of Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Van Heflin, and James Stewart, remain touchstones for fashion, design, and photography alike. Ithaca Gallery is pleased to present a selection of Aarons's work this August. All photographs © Slim Aarons / Getty Images.
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