Melina Mercouri
Slim Aarons · 1961
From € 250.00 Including VAT
About this work
Melina Mercouri, Athens 1961
Melina Mercouri sits on a wooden chair at a round iron table in the middle of a dusty little square, her hands folded under her chin. She wears a brown speckled dress and high-heeled pumps. Behind her two women in black sit at tables in front of an old stone chapel. On the left a small boy rides a tricycle, and a tree leans over the square.
The Greek actress Melina Mercouri was photographed in 1961 at a street café in Athens. Aarons sets her straight in front of the lens, made up and posed, while ordinary life goes on around her. The two women in black and the boy on the tricycle seem to belong to the street, not to the shot. That difference between the actress and the neighborhood, a few meters apart, carries the whole image.
- Photographer
- Slim Aarons
- Collection
- Slim Aarons
- Country
- Greece
- City
- Athens
- Year
- 1961
- Reference
- 3165250
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
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