Poolside Gossip, 1970

The house: Kaufmann Desert House

The villa in the background is the Kaufmann Desert House, designed in 1946 by the Austrian-American architect Richard Neutra for department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann. Glass, steel and stone, low horizontal lines and sliding walls that draw the desert into the living room: the house is one of the purest examples of desert modernism.

When Aarons came in 1970, Nelda and Joseph Linsk lived in the house. Architects already knew it, but this photograph made it famous with a far wider public. Many people who think of Palm Springs picture this image.

Aarons described his work as photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.

Who is in the photograph

According to the archive caption, actress Lita Baron walks into the frame on the far left. She is approaching Helen Dzo Dzo and Nelda Linsk, wife of art dealer Joseph Linsk, who sit by the water.

That moment of arrival gives the photograph its title and its tension: something seems about to be told. Aarons hardly directed. He let people do what they were doing anyway and pressed the shutter at the right moment.

Why this photograph stayed

There is no drama in this image, no event and no climax. That is exactly why it works: it is an afternoon that simply goes on. The San Jacinto mountains stand sharp in the light, the water is still and the shadows are short.

The composition helps. The house lies wide and low across the frame, the three women form a triangle and the blue rectangle of the pool keeps your eye inside the picture. You recognise it from across the room, which is exactly what a photograph on a wall should do.

On the wall

Poolside Gossip is a wide landscape image that needs room. It works best above a sofa, a sideboard or a dining table. The turquoise water and pale stone sit well with wood, linen and sand-coloured walls.