Prado Visitors
Slim Aarons · 1955
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About this work
Prado Visitors, circa 1955
In front of a large darkly framed painting a group of about ten visitors stands with their backs to the canvas. Every one of them holds their hands to their face and looks up and away, past the camera. A boy in a pale suit stands at the front. A rope barrier hangs on the right; the floor is stone.
The Prado in Madrid, around 1955. The visitors are looking at Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez, but by way of a mirror hung across the room — which is why everybody faces the other way. That is a strange echo of the painting itself, in which a mirror at the back of the room already decides who gets to be seen.
- Photographer
- Slim Aarons
- Collection
- Slim Aarons
- Country
- Spain
- City
- Madrid
- Year
- 1955
- Reference
- 1496421742
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
