SLIM AARONS: "PHOTOGRAPHING ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE DOING ATTRACTIVE THINGS IN ATTRACTIVE PLACES."

Slim Aarons ( original name George Allen Aarons; October 29, 1916 - May 30, 2006) was an American photographer known for photographing socialites, jet-sets and celebrities.

At 18 years old, Aarons enlisted in the U.S. Army worked as a photographer at West Point, 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]

After the war, Aarons moved to California and began photographing celebrities. In California, he shot his most praised photo, Kings of Hollywood, a 1957 New's Year's Eve photograph depicting Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper, and James Stewart relaxing at a bar in full formal wear.

He made his career out of what he called "photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places."

“They would invite me to one of their parties because they knew I wouldn't hurt them. I was one of them."

Slim Aarons has chosen to tell, like few others, the golden world, that of celebrity and the sweet life. He photographed Capri and the Costa Azurra, Lake Como and Acapulco, Newport and Palm Spring. Mick Jagger and Kirk Douglas. Polo players, princes and dukes.

Slim had tea with Jackie Kennedy and Marlene Dietrich, attended the home of Marilyn Monroe and the Duchess of Windsor. He knew perfectly well that to enter that rarefied world, off limits for all common mortals, he could not carry bulky instruments. Thus he limited the number of assistants to a minimum, he chose a camera, a pair of lenses and an exposure meter. And nothing more. His mantra has always been: no helpers, no props, no stylists, no lights, no problems. "I don't do fashion," he will say later. "I take pictures of people in their clothes and this becomes fashionable."

Slim Aarons made the wealthy modern sexy. His photos of the Acapulco banquets where Douglas Fairbanks, Oscar de la Renta or Emilio Pucci can be seen still make us dream today, but without excess, without pomp. Everything is elegant, everything has a balance, an order. High society has never been so seductive.

Alfred Hitchcock's film, Rear Window (1954), whose main character is a photographer played by Jimmy Stewart, is set in an apartment reputed to be based on Aarons' apartment.

In 1997, Mark Getty, the co-founder of Getty Images, visited Aarons in his home and bought Aarons' entire archive.

In 2017, filmmaker Fritz Mitchell released a documentary about Aarons, called Slim Aarons: The High Life.