Slim Aarons moved to California after WWII and began photographing celebrities. He never used a stylist, or a makeup artist. He made his career out of what he called “photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.” Toward the end of his long life (he died in 2006 at 90) he said “I knew everyone. They would invite me to one of their parties because they knew I wouldn’t hurt them. I was one of them.” Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film, Rear Window, whose main character is a photographer played by Jimmy Stewart, was set in an apartment supposedly based on Aarons’ apartment. Staley-Wise Gallery in New York has just mounted “A Man For All Season’s” with some of Aarons most famous pictures, which just get better with the passing of time. Through June 28. Staley-Wise 560 Broadway, New York.
Marianne Faithfull, Desmond Guinness, and Mick Jagger at Castletown Mansion, Ireland, 1968
Helena Rubenstein and Prince Archil Gourielli, New York, 1950
Peggy Guggenheim at the Palazzo Venier Dei Leoni, Venice, Italy, 1978
Salvador Dali, Port Ligat, Costa Brava, 1970
Babe Paley and William Paley at their cottage in Round Hill, Jamaica, 1959
C.Z. Guest and her son Alexander at their home Villa Artemis in Palm Beach, 1955