Christmas Traffic
Slim Aarons · 1953
From € 250.00 Including VAT
About this work
Christmas Traffic, New York 1953
A wide avenue at night, seen from above. Headlights draw white lines across the left lanes, taillights red lines across the right, until they meet at a single point in the distance. Lit Christmas trees stand on the median, and the street lamps burst into star-shaped glints. Parked cars line the curbs, dark in a row.
Park Avenue in New York, at Christmastime in 1953. According to the caption, the headlights and taillights give the avenue the appearance of a giant Christmas tree. That shape lies in the composition itself: wide at the bottom, pointed in the distance, with the trails of light as branches. The small real Christmas trees on the median repeat the motif in miniature, as decoration within the tree the traffic has drawn.
- Photographer
- Slim Aarons
- Collection
- Slim Aarons
- Country
- USA
- Year
- 1953
- Reference
- 3089147
The photographer
Photographing attractive people who were doing attractive things in attractive places.
George Allen Aarons, born in New York, served as a military photographer in World War II and subsequently transitioned to print journalism. Whereas he previously documented the war, he deliberately chose the opposite subject: the leisure time of the rich and famous, in breathtaking settings.
His most famous photograph, The Kings of Hollywood (1957), encapsulates what he sought in all his portraits: glamour, charisma, and celebrity, captured in a relaxed manner.
Aarons won the trust of the people he photographed, thereby gaining access to some of the most intimate and candid portraits of the twentieth century. In 2007, Getty Images published the book Poolside With Slim Aarons , crowning his legacy.
- Born October 29, 1916 , New York
- Died May 29, 2006 , Montrose, NY
- Hulton Archive / Getty Images
