Top-Hatted Chanteuse
Slim Aarons · 1959
From € 250.00 Including VAT
About this work
Top-Hatted Chanteuse, New York 1959
Marlene Dietrich stands in profile at a microphone, in a black tailcoat with a white bow tie, a white waistcoat and a white flower on the lapel. A top hat sits on her blonde hair. She laughs with her mouth open, a hand near her pocket. All around her is black; only her face and the white of the costume catch the light.
In top hat and tailcoat, Marlene Dietrich performed at an April in Paris ball in New York in April 1959. Aarons chooses the profile and a fully black background, so that the hall, the audience and the ball itself disappear. What remains is the costume as a graphic sign: black hat, white waistcoat, white bow tie, and between them a face that seems to be in the middle of a sentence.
- Photographer
- Slim Aarons
- Collection
- Slim Aarons
- Country
- USA
- City
- New York
- Year
- 1959
- Reference
- 3066261
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
