The story behind the photo
Lounging in Verbier, 1964
Beach chairs in the snow, holidaymakers in ski clothes and behind them a mountain range that stays white all the way to the horizon. Verbier, February 1964: a ski slope used as a beach.
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A beach of snow
Rows of deckchairs in red, green, orange and white stand on a snowy slope. The people in them are still in their ski clothes, and a few stand around talking. Nearly all the chairs face the same way, as if everyone is watching the same show.
The furniture makes this photograph. These are chairs you would expect by the sea, yet here they stand in the snow. Aarons had nothing to stage: he saw that the slope was being used the way a beach is used elsewhere, and photographed it head-on.
Verbier
Verbier lies in the Swiss canton of Valais, on a sunny plateau above the Val de Bagnes. In the 1960s the village grew into one of the better-known ski resorts in the Alps.
With Aarons, winter sport is not about speed or performance. Nobody in this photograph is skiing; they are sitting. It is the same eye with which he photographed swimming pools: not the effort, but the pause.
The composition
Because Aarons shot it face-on, the row of chairs and the mountain range mirror each other: two horizontal bands, one above the other. The snow takes the part that sand plays elsewhere, and the coloured chairs are the sharp accents in an otherwise light, white picture.
Already own one of Aarons' pool photographs, such as Eden-Roc Pool? Here you find the same body of work in a reversed palette: white and cool instead of blue and warm.
On the wall
Lounging in Verbier is a wide landscape image full of light and air. It works well above a sofa or a dining table, and especially on a dark or warm wall, where the white of the snow comes forward. With wood, wool and natural stone it gives a room a touch of the chalet.
Same place
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