Slim, rich and famous

One of the most famous photographers of the 20th century, Slim Aarons captured the post-war jet set, but his images belie a desire to document

- Rosie Paterson

EVEN if you’ve never stayed at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, France, you’ve likely seen a photograph of it. One photograph in particular, taken in the height of summer in 1976. There’s a swimming pool in the foreground—blasted out of basalt rock—bronzed figures in various states of undress around it and a white, low-slung Art Deco building with rounded corners in the background. To the centre left, there’s a diving board jutting out above a French navy ocean.

The hotel still exists—one of the most famous in the world—as does the diving board. The pool, too, albeit much updated. The photographer is sadly no longer with us. He was known as Slim Aarons. Over the course of a six-decade career, he documented, in his own words, ‘attractive people who were doing attractive things in attractive places’.

Ironically, George ‘Slim’ Aarons, would not have described himself as a jet-set photographer. Born in October 1916, on the east coast of the US, Aarons cut his professional teeth as a photojournalist in the Second World War, shooting for Stars and Stripes and Yank magazines. After the war, echoing many of his colleagues, he looked for work inside the burgeoning television and magazine industries. ‘It was an alumni association of sorts,’ says his daughter, Mary Aarons, who sometimes doubled as her father’s on-set assistant. ‘They depended on each other for referrals and LIFE magazine was huge. He shot a lot for them, which took him to Hollywood and Broadway, shooting celebrities and then that led to more.’