Lily Safra
Slim Aarons · 1991
From € 250.00 Including VAT
About this work
Lily Safra, La Leopolda 1991
A woman with blond hair pinned up sits on a sofa upholstered in floral fabric, one arm over the armrest. She wears a salmon-pink silk blouse and a double strand of pearls and looks calmly into the camera. Behind her a colonnade runs into the depth, with a stone statue on a pedestal, white orchids and a table set with blue-and-white china.
Lily Safra, wife of the Lebanese-born banker Edmond Safra, was photographed at home in La Leopolda in Southern France in July 1991. The background is just out of focus, and that is the choice the portrait makes. Columns, statue and china remain recognizable but recede, so the house is present without demanding attention. The pink of the blouse returns in the tablecloth behind her.
- Photographer
- Slim Aarons
- Collection
- Slim Aarons
- Country
- France
- Year
- 1991
- Reference
- 53397605
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
