Slim Aarons Beauty And The Best
1960s American Realist Color Photography
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1960s American Realist Color Photography
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1960s Realist Figurative Photography
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1960s Realist Figurative Photography
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1960s Realist Figurative Photography
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1960s Realist Figurative Photography
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1960s Realist Color Photography
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1950s Modern Figurative Photography
Black and White, Silver Gelatin
Slim AaronsSlim Aarons - Bad Luck Gloria Oscar Night 1951 Limited Estate print, 1951 (Printed Later)
1970s Realist Portrait Photography
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1950s American Realist Black and White Photography
Photographic Paper, Emulsion, ABS, Black and White, Photogram, Digital
1950s American Realist Black and White Photography
Emulsion, Photographic Paper, ABS, Black and White, Digital, Photogram
1950s American Realist Black and White Photography
Emulsion, Photographic Paper, ABS, Black and White, Digital, Photogram
1950s American Realist Black and White Photography
Emulsion, Photographic Paper, ABS, Black and White, Digital, Photogram
1960s Realist Color Photography
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1960s Realist Color Photography
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1960s Realist Color Photography
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1960s Realist Color Photography
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1960s Realist Color Photography
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1970s Surrealist Portrait Photography
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1950s American Realist Figurative Photography
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1950s American Realist Figurative Photography
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1970s Realist Portrait Photography
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1950s Surrealist Figurative Photography
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1960s American Realist Portrait Photography
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1950s Surrealist Figurative Photography
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1950s Surrealist Figurative Photography
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1950s American Realist Figurative Photography
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1960s Realist Color Photography
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2010s Greek Contemporary Cocktail Rings
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2010s Contemporary Figurative Photography
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People Also Browsed
Early 2000s Contemporary Nude Photography
Color
1960s Realist Nude Photography
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1960s Surrealist Figurative Prints
Lithograph
1980s Pop Art Prints and Multiples
Lithograph, Offset
Vintage 1950s Indian Mid-Century Modern Armchairs
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Vintage 1970s Italian Post-Modern Vases
Ceramic, Paint
1980s Pop Art Prints and Multiples
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Mid-20th Century Chinese Console Tables
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Vintage 1960s American Mid-Century Modern Table Mirrors
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20th Century Japanese Decorative Art
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1960s Realist Portrait Photography
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1990s Assemblage Abstract Sculptures
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1990s Other Art Style Figurative Photography
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1990s American Other Contemporary Art
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1980s Modern Black and White Photography
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2010s European Animal Sculptures
Resin
Recent Sales
Late 20th Century Modern Color Photography
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Vintage 1970s Books
Mid-20th Century Modern Black and White Photography
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Vintage 1970s American Books
Slim Aarons Beauty And The Best For Sale on 1stDibs
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American photographer Slim Aarons captured the 20th century’s international jet set — U.S. socialites, European royalty, Hollywood stars — at play in sun-kissed locales like Monaco, Saint-Tropez and Palm Beach, as well as other luxurious settings around the globe.
Committed to eschewing makeup and artificial lighting, Aarons created images that are at once candid and polished, combining the relaxed posture of his subjects, who trusted him to document their lives, with the visual sharpness of a seasoned art director. Having gotten his start taking pictures for the U.S. military magazine Yank during World War II, he contributed over the course of his career to Life, Town and Country and Holiday magazines and published several books.
Aarons was born in Manhattan in 1916. He joined the army at 18, shooting military maneuvers at West Point before serving as a combat photographer, for which he was awarded a Purple Heart. After the war, he moved to California and began snapping socialites and movie stars. In the 1950s, he opened a bureau for Life magazine in Rome, where he took pictures capturing the postwar scene. Aarons was always able to win the trust of his elite subjects, who saw him as close to a peer, rather than a paparazzo. In a 2002 interview with The Independent, he remarked, ''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.'' This access allowed Aarons to document the rich and famous with their guard down, reading newspapers and magazines, talking on the phone, relaxing by the pool, and chatting with friends. The 1957 photograph The Kings of Hollywood, for example, which won him wide acclaim, shows Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart laughing together as they celebrate New Year’s Eve.
Many of Aarons’s best-known images involve games and sports. In the 1972 Poolside Backgammon, two young women play the board game of the title against the backdrop of a majestic Acapulco estate. In 1958’s Cannes Watersports, a couple attempts to glide across the Golfe de la Napoule on Jet Skis, one expertly and one hanging on for dear life. And in Penthouse Pool, shot in Athens in 1961, a young woman wearing a yellow bathing cap smiles coyly at the camera, surrounded by friends and brightly colored seat cushions, with the Acropolis faintly visible in the background. Among Aarons’s books are 1974’s A Wonderful Time: An Intimate Portrait of the Good Life, and its 2003 sequel, Once Upon a Time. His final book, A Place in the Sun, was published in 2005, one year before his death.
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The first permanent image created by a camera — which materialized during the 1820s — is attributed to Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The French inventor was on to something for sure. Kodak introduced roll film in the 1880s, allowing photography to become more democratic, although cameras wouldn’t be universally accessible until several decades later.
Digital photographic techniques, software, smartphone cameras and social-networking platforms such as Instagram have made it even easier in the modern era for budding photographers to capture the world around them as well as disseminate their images far and wide.
What might leading figures of visual art such as Andy Warhol have done with these tools at their disposal?
Today, when we aren’t looking at the digital photos that inundate us on our phones, we look to the past to celebrate the photographers who have broken rules as well as records — provocative and prolific artists like Horst P. Horst, Lillian Bassman and Helmut Newton, who altered the face of fashion and portrait photography; visionary documentary photographers such as Gordon Parks, whose best-known work was guided by social justice; and pioneers of street photography such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, who shot for revolutionary travel magazines like Holiday with the likes of globetrotting society lensman Slim Aarons.
Find photographers you may not know in Introspective and The Study — where you’ll read about Berenice Abbott, who positioned herself atop skyscrapers for the perfect shot, or “conceptual artist-adventurer” Charles Lindsay, whose work combines scientific rigor with artistic expression, or Massimo Listri, known for his epic interiors of opulent Old World libraries. Photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron was given a Kodak camera as a child. Later, she shot on Polaroid film before buying her first 35mm camera in her teens. Barron's stunning portraits of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Warhol and other artists chronicle a crucial chapter of New York’s cultural history.
Throughout the past two centuries, photographers have used their medium to create expressive work that has resonated for generations. Shop a voluminous collection of this powerful fine photography on 1stDibs. Search by photographer to find the perfect piece for your living room wall, or spend some time with the work organized under various categories, such as landscape photography, nude photography and more.