Items Similar to Self Portrait on Holiday in Athens, Greece (Slim Aarons Estate Edition)

Slim Aarons - Bermuda Beach, Estate Edition

Slim Aarons - Eleuthera Pool Party

Slim Aarons - Freeport Beach

Slim Aarons - Abaco Holiday

Slim Aarons - Out Islands

Slim Aarons - Treasure Cay

Want more images or videos?

Request additional images or videos from the seller

1 of 6

Slim Aarons
Self Portrait on Holiday in Athens, Greece (Slim Aarons Estate Edition)
1955

Name: Self Portrait on Holiday in Athens, Greece (Slim Aarons Estate Edition)
Brand: Slim Aarons
Price: 3000 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Legendary photographer Slim Aarons relaxes in a self portrait shot in Athens, near the Acropolis. Slim Aarons said, "I love a solo holiday. It tends to refresh the part of oneself that is most depleted by modern life — patience. "Let me dispel a few myths. You will be lonely. No: you won’t. My solo travels in Paris have brought many perfect hours of being alone but not a moment of loneliness. People who depend on other people are often in hiding from themselves. Two and a quarter million people live in the City of Light: you will see many of them and you will pass them in the street, but when you see Notre Dame after dark and walk home and perhaps stop to have a drink in the Marais, you can feel that the only thing that is missing from your experience is the common dependency on someone to distract your attention. "I’ve had solo pints of Guinness in the pubs of County Kerry and County Cork. I’ve walked across the sage- and juniper-scented maquis of Corsica on a spring day, where you can still find the world of Napoleon’s childhood. More than once I went to the Isle of Iona in the Scottish Hebrides, the burial ground of the early Scottish kings, and watched darkness descend on the Sound of Iona while evensong came from the old monastery. I wasn’t on these travels for visions or transformation, but simply to feel the force of the world, for a day, for a night, as it operates outside the chatter of commerce or media or mass psychology. I love these things, but not on holiday, when one might hope for a place where you can resist the temptation to be drowned out. "It’s not for everybody. It’s not for people who are apt to get anxious about the good times they could be having. Life is so virtual nowadays that people might spend their lives casually mourning a version of reality that can only exist elsewhere. The virtue of many modern holiday destinations is that they provide the perfect conditions in which high-paying customers can feel entirely homesick. This has been excellent news for the comic novel, but I’m sure I couldn’t love it. The wanderlust of the solo traveler doesn’t kill homesickness, it partners it, making the vacation all the better for involving one’s profound wish to go home to normal life a little changed. If I ruled the world, and you can rest assured that I don’t, I would send each person for a fortnight away on their own. It wouldn’t serve the divorce lawyers or the councils of war very well, but it would make people much happier to know the entire world was theirs." Estate edition of 150. Estate stamp embossed on recto, hand numbered in ink on recto, with certificate of authenticity from the estate. Complimentary delivery to your framer, worldwide. Increasingly heralded for his influence, Slim Aarons (1916-2006) made a career out of photographing "attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places." Aarons is known for his iconic images of Hollywood glamour and luxurious people, places and lifestyles. Aarons began his career as a combat photographer in World War II. Though he earned a Purple Heart for his service, he declared that combat had taught him that the only beach worth landing on was decorated with beautiful people enjoying themselves in the sun. Slim Aarons is noted for his documentation of the Beautiful People over 50 years, encompassing high society, celebrity, aristocracy, and the jet set. He was born and raised in New York City and New Jersey and later New Hampshire. He took up photography as a teenager. At the age of eighteen, he enlisted in the U. S. Army and was later appointed official photographer at the United States Military Academy at West Point. During World War II he served as an army combat photographer for Yank magazine in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. After the war he became a freelance photojournalist, first based in Hollywood, then Rome, then New York. His photographs appeared in many magazines, including Life, Holiday, Town & Country, Look, Venture, and Travel & Leisure. His first book A Wonderful Time (1974) is considered a classic. * We are pleased to represent the entire archive of the Slim Aarons Estate, offering the official Slim Aarons Estate Edition (only offered in this edition of 150). Please contact us for additional photographs from Slim Aarons * 40 x 40 inches $3300 30 x 30 inches $2800 20 x 20 inches $2500 Slide show contains a sample of other images, including Poolside Glamour and Kings of Hollywood, and a close-up of the Slim Aarons estate's stamp. The Slim Aarons Estate has released the limited Estate edition as a Lambda print, which is a modern c-type prints. They have chosen Lambda prints for their sharpness, clarity, colour saturation and quality, compared to archival inkjet prints ("giclee"). Lambda printing gives true continuous tone.

Creator:

Slim Aarons (1916-2006, American)

Creation Year:

1955

Dimensions:

Height: 20 in (50.8 cm)Width: 20 in (50.8 cm)

Medium:

Lambda

Movement & Style:

Realist

Period:

1950-1959

Framing:

Framing Options Available

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Los Angeles, CA

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU1483171791

View Invoice

Shop All Slim Aarons

Slim Aarons

American photographer Slim Aarons captured the 20th century’s international jet set — U.S. socialites, European royalty, Hollywood stars — at play in sun-kissed locales like Monaco, Saint-Tropez and Palm Beach, as well as other luxurious settings around the globe.

Committed to eschewing makeup and artificial lighting, Aarons created images that are at once candid and polished, combining the relaxed posture of his subjects, who trusted him to document their lives, with the visual sharpness of a seasoned art director. Having gotten his start taking pictures for the U.S. military magazine Yank during World War II, he contributed over the course of his career to Life, Town and Country and Holiday magazines and published several books.

Aarons was born in Manhattan in 1916. He joined the army at 18, shooting military maneuvers at West Point before serving as a combat photographer, for which he was awarded a Purple Heart. After the war, he moved to California and began snapping socialites and movie stars. In the 1950s, he opened a bureau for Life magazine in Rome, where he took pictures capturing the postwar scene. Aarons was always able to win the trust of his elite subjects, who saw him as close to a peer, rather than a paparazzo. In a 2002 interview with The Independent, he remarked, ''I knew everyone. They would invite me to one of their parties because they knew I wouldn't hurt them. I was one of them.'' This access allowed Aarons to document the rich and famous with their guard down, reading newspapers and magazines, talking on the phone, relaxing by the pool, and chatting with friends. The 1957 photograph The Kings of Hollywood, for example, which won him wide acclaim, shows Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart laughing together as they celebrate New Year’s Eve.

Many of Aarons’s best-known images involve games and sports. In the 1972 Poolside Backgammon, two young women play the board game of the title against the backdrop of a majestic Acapulco estate. In 1958’s Cannes Watersports, a couple attempts to glide across the Golfe de la Napoule on Jet Skis, one expertly and one hanging on for dear life. And in Penthouse Pool, shot in Athens in 1961, a young woman wearing a yellow bathing cap smiles coyly at the camera, surrounded by friends and brightly colored seat cushions, with the Acropolis faintly visible in the background. Among Aarons’s books are 1974’s A Wonderful Time: An Intimate Portrait of the Good Life, and its 2003 sequel, Once Upon a Time. His final book, A Place in the Sun, was published in 2005, one year before his death.

Find a collection of vintage Slim Aarons photography on 1stDibs.