Penthouse Pool, 1961

A pool on the roof of Athens

According to the archive caption, Slim Aarons took this photograph in July 1961 at the penthouse pool of the Canellopoulos family in Athens. The caption is brief: young women by the pool. The image needs nothing more.

At the edge kneels a woman in a white-and-gold swimsuit, wearing a bathing cap covered in yellow flowers. In the water a second woman leans on the edge. Round cushions in red and yellow lie on the marble, bright dots against the pale stone.

The Acropolis as a backdrop

Behind the balustrade rises the Acropolis, the rock crowned by the Parthenon, the temple the Athenians built for the goddess Athena in the fifth century BC. It is the most famous building in the city, and Aarons gives it no more room than the cushions in the foreground.

That is the wit of the image. Twenty-five centuries of history have become the backdrop to an afternoon by the pool. Aarons did not put the monument in the spotlight, nor did he crop it out: he left it standing where it stands.

Warmer than most pool pictures

In many of Aarons' pool photographs blue is the main colour, as in Eden-Roc Pool in Antibes. Here yellow, red and gold play an equal part, together with the marble and the warm stone of the city. If you already have a blue pool picture on the wall, this is a work that belongs with it without repeating it.

The photograph also appears in the book Poolside with Slim Aarons.

On the wall

Penthouse Pool is a square image, which makes it versatile. It fits above a narrow sideboard, beside a door or in a row with other square works, and it keeps its strength on a smaller wall. The warm colours sit well with terracotta, wood and off-white.