Slim Aarons: The Sporting Life

 
American society girl Minnie Cushing carries her surfboard under her arm. Sprouting Rock Beach Club, Newport, Rhode Island, September 1965. All photos by Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

 

Now on chic coffee tables everywhere is Slim Aarons:Women, the newest monograph of Slim Aarons photographs. As chronicler of the lives of the rich and aristocratic in the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s, Slim Aarons was unrivaled. His photographs are the embodiment of “the good life”, which of course includes the sporting life. Skiing in Austria, waterskiing in Antibes, surfing in Newport, canoeing in Lake Tahoe, and snorkeling in Bermuda are a few of the “leisure” activities, as Aarons refered to them, featured in the book.
 

Princess Lucy Ruspoli stands in front of a colourful wall of old skis in Lech am Arlberg, Austria, February 1979. (Photo by Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Princess Lucy Ruspoli stands in front of a colourful wall of old skis in Lech am Arlberg, Austria, February 1979.

 

Aarons served as a photographer in World War II, and when it was over turned his camera in the opposite direction. According to the author of Slim Aarons:Women, Laura Hawk, who was Aaron’s assistant for over a decade, it was “people seeking pleasure” that inspired him, and he absolutely loved shooting sports. What became his niche of photographing the super wealthy was by accident, but it was there that he found the splendor in these activities and he was always looking for a new sporting angle. Hawk described one of their many trips to St. Moritz, when Aarons had heard about a new sport called “ski joering” at the famed Palace Hotel, where skiers were being across the ice pulled by a horse. He couldn’t wait to photograph it. Recalls Hawk, “Slim ran out into the middle of the track to get it head on. He was like a child about it. He loved the adrenaline rush!”

 

Young women canoeing on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, 1959. (Photo by Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Young women canoeing on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, 1959.

 

In addition to these sporting images, the book includes other iconic, as well as never before published photographs of “attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places”— the subject of which Slim Aarons in his own words, made his life’s work.
 

A woman sunbathing in a motorboat as it tows a waterskiier, in the sea off the Eden Roc annex to the Hotel du Cap in Antibes on the French Riviera, August 1969. (Photo by Slim Aarons/Getty Images)

A woman sunbathing in a motorboat as it tows a waterskiier, in the sea off the Eden Roc annex to the Hotel du Cap in Antibes on the French Riviera, August 1969.

 

Two women recline on improvised sunbeds in Cranmore Mountain, New Hampshire, circa 1955. (Photo by Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Two women recline on improvised sunbeds in Cranmore Mountain, New Hampshire, circa 1955. (Photo by Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

 

Sunbathing and swimming at a beach in Bermuda, June 1967. (Photo by Slim Aarons/Getty Images)

Sunbathing and swimming at a beach in Bermuda, June 1967. (Photo by Slim Aarons/Getty Images)

 
 

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