Hotel Excelsior
Slim Aarons · 1957
From € 250.00 Including VAT
About this work
Hotel Excelsior, Lido 1957
A facade of red and ocher brick fills the upper half, row after row of pointed-arch windows with balconies and half-lowered awnings. Below it a strip of green, and then the beach cabins: wooden huts with striped canopies and poles. On the sand, bathers lie and sit on blankets and loungers; on the left two people in swimwear walk by.
The beach side of Hotel Excelsior on the Lido of Venice, in 1957. Slim Aarons photographed head-on, with no sky and no depth, so the facade almost becomes a flat pattern. The cabins repeat that rhythm on a small scale, and the bathers are the only irregularity. The contrast between the strict grid above and the loose bustle below makes the picture.
- Photographer
- Slim Aarons
- Collection
- Slim Aarons
- Country
- Italy
- City
- Venice
- Year
- 1957
- Reference
- 53438142
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
