Eden-Roc Pool, 1976

The hotel on the cape

Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc sits at the tip of Cap d'Antibes, between Cannes and Nice. It is one of the best-known hotels on the Côte d'Azur, with a history going back to the nineteenth century. Its most famous part is not in the hotel itself but below it: the swimming pool, cut into the rocks right by the sea.

According to the archive caption, Aarons photographed the guests around the pool here in August 1976. People lie in the sun on the white benches. At the near end stands a man in yellow swimming trunks with a ball in his hand.

A cross-section of a place

Aarons photographed from above, and so the picture reads like a cross-section. At the bottom the rocks with the sunbeds, then the pool, then the terrace, then the hotel and finally the sky. Each layer has its own colour.

You are not looking at a party here but at the anatomy of a place. The people are small, the water is large and the cliff holds it all together. It is an image you keep exploring, from bottom to top and back again.

The same coast, later

Eighteen years earlier Aarons was a little further along, in Cannes, photographing waterskiers from the Carlton pier. The swimwear has changed, the sun and the calm have not. Together the two images show how loyal he stayed to this coast.

On the wall

Eden-Roc Pool is a portrait image, which suits its layered build. It fits a narrower wall, beside a door or window, or a hallway you walk past every day. The turquoise and white limestone look good with sand, linen and dark wood.