The story behind the photo
Keep Your Cool
A table in the swimming pool, two white chairs in the shallow water and a backgammon board between two players. Acapulco, and beyond that only turquoise.
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Who is playing
According to the archive caption, Carmen Alvarez and Frank 'Brandy' Brandstetter are playing a game of backgammon in a swimming pool in Acapulco. Both sit on white chairs in the shallow water. He wears a straw hat with a coloured band, and the board lies open between them.
Nobody is smiling for the camera. They are playing, and that is exactly why the picture feels so relaxed.
The idea is the whole photograph
The furniture stands in the pool, not beside it. The photograph needs nothing more. Aarons had nothing to add: he sat down at eye level and kept the edge of the pool out of frame.
So the game seems to float on the water. No horizon, no side, just two players and a board in a field of turquoise. It is a joke you only fully see at second glance, and it never wears off after that.
Backgammon in Acapulco
This is not the only time Aarons captured the game by the water. Poolside Backgammon was also taken in Acapulco. Side by side, the two images make a pair that genuinely belongs together: the same city, the same game, a different view.
On the wall
Keep Your Cool is a landscape image with a lot of calm blue. It works well above a sofa or a sideboard, or in a hallway with a long wall. The turquoise looks fresh next to white, wood and rattan.
Same place
More from Acapulco
Related stories
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Poolside Backgammon, 1972
Two women bent over a backgammon board at the edge of the pool, a bright pink bag beside them, and across the water a white villa with columns where the other guests have gathered. Acapulco, 1972.
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Poolside Gossip, 1970
Two women by a pool, a third walking up from the left, and behind them a glass house in the Palm Springs desert. It is Slim Aarons' best-known photograph, and almost nothing happens in it.