At 18 years old, Aarons enlisted in the United States Army, worked as a photographer at the United States Military Academy, and later served as a combat photographer in World War II and earned a Purple Heart. Aarons said combat had taught him the only beach worth landing on was "decorated with beautiful, seminude girls tanning in a tranquil sun." [1] Aarons was born to Yiddish-speaking immigrants who had lived in a tenement on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His father, Charlie Aarons (born Susman Aronowicz), distanced himself from the family; his mother, Stella Karvetzky, was sent to a sanitarium. Not knowing what had become of his parents, Aarons spent his boyhood at varying times with an aunt, at an orphanage, and with his grandmother and cousins in New Hampshire. [2] Photography career [ edit ] My problem with flipping through Slim Aarons books, is that while his photos are amazing, they look better online than they do in print. I didn’t do fashion,” the photographer once said. “I did the people in their clothes that became the fashion.” PARTY MIX | An outtake from Slim Aarons’s iconic shoot at the Kaufmann Desert House, designed by Richard Neutra, in Palm Springs, California, 1970. Photo: Slim Aarons

The Slim Aarons Prints Collection - Galerie Prints - Premium The Slim Aarons Prints Collection - Galerie Prints - Premium

Peretz, Evgenia (27 January 2014). "Inside the world of Slim Aarons". The Hive . Retrieved 2017-11-09. Aarons died in 2006 in Montrose, New York, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [1] Bibliography [ edit ] Herein lies what Waldron described as the difference between fashion and style – between the transient and the timeless. Indeed, Aarons appeared unconcerned about his subjects’ wardrobes or the trends of the day.

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The championship swimmer and movie star Esther Williams poolside in Florida, circa 1955. Williams was the darling of both the aquatic and the film worlds. Unable to compete in the 1940 Olympic Games because of the war, she joined Billy Rose’s Aquacade in San Francisco, where she swam with Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller—a five-time Olympic gold medallist himself – and caught the attention of MGM scouts. At the pinnacle of her movie career, from 1945 to 1949, the actress dubbed ‘the Million Dollar Mermaid’ had at least one film in the top 20 box office hits each year. Photograph: Slim Aarons/Getty. Caption: Laura Hawk Walker, Tonya (2008). "Rich, Attractive People In Attractive Places Doing Attractive Things". Virginia Commonwealth University. {{ cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= ( help) Laure de La Haye‐Jousselin at the gates to her château in Normandy, 1957. Slim waited four days in the village of Saint‐Aubind’Écrosville to get this shot. Once the scene was set, he not only managed to get the subject to engage with the camera, but got her horse and two dogs to cooperate as well. As Slim’s longtime friend and editor Frank Zachary observed, ‘Slim managed to get the horse to raise his hoof. A real, honest‐to‐God 17th‐century portrait.’ Photograph: Slim Aarons/Getty. Caption: Laura Hawk

Slim Aarons, ‘Poolside Gossip Recreating the Iconic Photo by Slim Aarons, ‘Poolside Gossip

Condition: Very Good. Very Good condition. Shows only minor signs of wear, and very minimal markings inside (if any).

Galerie Prints

In 2017, filmmaker Fritz Mitchell released a documentary about Aarons, called Slim Aarons: The High Life. [9] In the documentary it is revealed that Aarons was Jewish and grew up in conditions that were in complete contrast to what he told friends and family of his childhood. Aarons claimed that he was raised in New Hampshire, was an orphan, and had no living relations. After his death in 2006, his widow and daughter learned the truth that Aarons had grown up in a poor immigrant Yiddish-speaking family on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As a boy his mother was diagnosed with mental health issues and admitted to a psychiatric hospital, which caused him to be passed around among relatives. He resented and had no relationship with his father and had a brother, Harry, who would later commit suicide. Several documentary interviewees postulate that if Aarons's true origins had been known, his career would have been unlikely to succeed within the restricted world of celebrity and WASP privilege his photography glamorized. [ citation needed] Death [ edit ] a b c d Martin, Douglas (June 1, 2006). "Slim Aarons, 89, Dies; Photographed Celebrities at Play". The New York Times. p.A23. Olivier Coquelin, who opened the first American discotheque, and his wife, the Hawaiian singer and actress Lahaina Kameha. Slim Aarons/Getty Images Hawk writes in her introduction, “Slim’s visual narratives give us an intime glimpse into the world of the upper classes and their rituals in the pursuit of leisure. That his half century of work continues to captivate successive generations of admirers—and that this is the fifth book published of his photography—reveals not only a yearning for an irretrievable time gone by but also a universal fascination with the seeming forbidden worlds of wealth and privilege.”

Slim Aarons: Women : Hawk, Laura, Aarons, Slim, Getty Images

What a fun coffee table style book! The content is interesting, but at times pulls away from the beautiful photos, so I found myself skimming the writing and studying the photos instead. Aarons may have spent half a century surrounded by affluence, but his fixation on glamour may have been rooted in experiences of poverty and war. I’m going to have fun photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places, and maybe take some attractive photographs as well.” She was freezing and mad. It looks idyllic now, but to get it just right in a cold and dirty pool took a while.”Working for publications like Town & Country, Harper’s Bazaar and Life magazine, the late photographer spent five decades taking unapologetically glamorous pictures of aristocrats and socialites. Whether lounging in Italian villas, boating off the coast of Monaco or foxhunting in the English countryside, his globetrotting subjects epitomized high society – and old money. He obviously became close to some of these people,” he added. “He photographed subjects as they came up through society and then photographed their children decades later. These are long-term relationships… but he was also very (much) of a fly on the wall and always kept that professional distance.