Porto Ercole
Slim Aarons · 1980
From € 250.00 Including VAT
About this work
Porto Ercole, Tuscany 1980
From above you look onto dark blue water in which a wooden speedboat with a glossy varnished hull lies still, a handful of people in swimwear aboard. Next to it floats an orange rubber dinghy. At the bottom of the picture a windsurfer glides past on a white board, with a yellow-orange sail bearing a number. Through the clear water, rocks and seagrass shimmer up.
Private boats in Porto Ercole, Tuscany, in August 1980. Aarons photographs from high above, so there is no horizon and the water becomes a single plane on which the vessels lie like objects on a table. The sail leans the opposite way to the slanting line of the speedboat above it. That sets up a contrast between two ways of being on the water: lying still in company, or moving alone.
- Photographer
- Slim Aarons
- Collection
- Slim Aarons
- Country
- Italy
- City
- Porto Ercole
- Year
- 1980
- Reference
- 88048079
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
