Slim Aarons: Once Upon a Time FROM THE PUBLISHER
"It was Slim Aarons who perfected, if not invented, the environmental portrait while photographing the international elite in their exclusive playgrounds during the postwar heyday of the jet-set: his self-described mission, to document attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places. This book is the ultimate insider's view of the lifestyles of the wealthy, privileged, and powerful." From the end of World War II through the 1980s, Aarons photographed the rich and famous, the beautiful and the celebrated. His postwar portraits form a virtual genealogy of wealth, privilege, and talent - in al its manifestations: Hollywood royalty, European aristocracy, the grande dames of high society, captains of industry, media moguls, statesmen, and stars of every sort. Though upholding the glamorous image of wealth, power, talent, and beauty, he saw himself as a journalist whose duty it was to inform, and this led him to develop the environmental portrait - photographing his subjects at home, at work, at play, and mingling with each other. Indeed his subjects are almost always shown in a setting synonymous with their station in life. And in a host of memorable portraits, across a vast geography of resorts, spas, estates, palaces, elegant apartments, and other glamorous settings, Slim Aarons's photographs define that legendary class known as the Beautiful People and documents a lost era of style, grace, and the good life.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Although none of the pictures in these two sumptuous photography books is more than 60 years old, they seem to capture a bygone era that may make readers nostalgic for a world they never inhabited themselves. Aarons was a combat photographer during World War II, but his subsequent freelance work for magazines such as Holiday and Town & Country allowed him to shoot "attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places," as he often put it. The photographs in this volume, Aarons's first since A Wonderful Time (o.p.) more than 30 years ago, will make readers feel that they have gone on a holiday themselves. Aarons's famous subjects include David and Nelson Rockefeller, Lilly Pulitzer, Man Ray, and Joan Collins, and everyone and everything looks so pristine that the images resemble those travel posters that dominated advertising in the 1920s and 1930s. O'Neill's world, although just as glamorous as Aarons's, seems a bit more accessible and humorous. The focus of O'Neill's book is "celebrity," and celebrity is indeed what we see here, in all of its varying shades-from a young Mick Jagger to a stately Margaret Thatcher. In Aarons's sense of the word, O'Neill is himself an "attractive person"; he has known many of his subjects personally through the years, and some of them appear in both books. People and places may not look as immaculate here, but it certainly looks like a great deal of fun. Suitable for all larger public and academic libraries with large photography collections (and/or budgets).-Sheila Devaney, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Athens Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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