Getty Images Gallery - Slim Aarons 'Poolside Gossip' Wood Framed Print & Mount, 44.5 x 59.5cm

A desert house in Palm Springs designed by Richard Neutra for Edgar J. Kaufmann. Lita Baron (far left) approaches Helen Dzo Dzo (left) and Nelda Linsk, wife of art dealer Joseph Linsk. Original artwork: 'A Wonderful Time' by photographer Slim Aarons, from Getty Images Archive.

Over the course of a long career, American photographer Slim Aarons portrayed high society, aristocracy, icons of business, fashion and the arts, Hollywood elite and their milieu. In doing so, he captured a golden age of wealth, privilege, beauty and leisure that occurred alongside the cultural and political backdrop of the second half of the twentieth century.

After serving as a US Army photographer during the Second World War, Slim vowed to leave atrocity behind and focus on photographing, ‘attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.’ Assignments for magazines such as Life, Holiday and Town & Country took him from inside the stately homes of Beverly Hills and Park Avenue to the slopes of Gstaad. Summers were spent in Palm Beach, on the Riviera or bouncing around the Caribbean. Like the man himself, a Slim Aarons portrait delivered a freshness, optimism and 'je ne sais quoi' that opened doors and fostered trust among the world’s elite. His eminently collectable body of work, which has been owned and managed by Getty Images since 1997, reveals a bygone world with a mischievous eye. The Getty Images Archive is the home of the Slim Aarons Collection.

The Getty Images Gallery was founded in 1998 and is the only gallery with complete access to the Getty Images Archive, which at 80 million photographs and growing is the world’s largest commercial photography collection. Built on the foundation of the legendary Hulton Picture Collection, the archive holds more than 1500 individual collections in a state-of-the-art London facility. Among them is the collective output of photojournalist publications and newspapers such as Picture Post, Evening Standard and Daily Express.

John Lewis & Partners works with the Gallery’s dedicated and knowledgeable team of curators and darkroom specialists to produce a selection of classic works by renowned photographers. Each print has been hand-produced from the original negative by a Getty Images master printer using traditional darkroom practices and photographic papers achieving a wide tonal range and archival quality to be enjoyed by generations.

Worth knowing: This photographic print has a card mount with an FSC-certified solid ayous wood frame and glass front, and arrives ready to wall mount. Included is a date-stamped certificate of authenticity from Getty Images Archive for the print.

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