Hotel Il Pellicano
Slim Aarons · 1973
From € 250.00 Including VAT
About this work
Hotel Il Pellicano, Porto Ercole 1973
Between dark pine trunks you look onto a swimming pool of pale blue water, in which a single swimmer keeps their head above the surface. Around the pool, orange and blue folding chairs stand on a terrace of natural stone; someone lies sunbathing on a red towel. Beyond the stone wall the sea glitters, and on the low wall sits a wicker basket.
The seaside pool of Hotel Il Pellicano in Porto Ercole, Tuscany, in August 1973. Aarons photographs it not up close but from behind the trees, as if you had paused for a moment on the path. The trunks stand as vertical stripes across the picture and divide the pool into compartments. That distance makes the scene calmer: you see a summer day simply carrying on, with no one aware of being watched.
- Photographer
- Slim Aarons
- Collection
- Slim Aarons
- Country
- Italy
- City
- Porto Ercole
- Year
- 1973
- Reference
- 87922972
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
