Slim Aarons Photography

As an official partner with Getty Images, Electric Gallery has full access to the iconic Slim Aarons photography archive. 

About the Artist

Slim Aarons spent five decades photographing what he famously described as "attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places." Working for publications including Life, Town & Country and Harper's Bazaar, he became the defining chronicler of mid-century high society, capturing European aristocrats, Hollywood icons and American socialites in their most effortlessly glamorous moments.

Aarons pioneered the genre of environmental portraiture, where setting carries as much weight as subject. Sun-drenched pool terraces in Palm Springs, clifftop villas on the Côte d'Azur, manicured lawns in the Hamptons; his locations were never backdrops, they were protagonists. Shot entirely in natural light with no artificial staging, his images possess a warmth, colour saturation and sense of lived-in luxury that has never been replicated.

His archive, now held by Getty Images, remains one of the most culturally resonant bodies of photographic work of the 20th century and one of the most sought-after in the art and interior market today.

Curator's Comment:

"Slim Aarons prints are one of the most versatile and commercially intelligent art choices available to the specifying designer. The saturated palette and horizontal compositional weight make them particularly effective in schemes where you need the artwork to anchor a space without competing with the material palette. Think lacquered joinery, textured wall coverings or stone-heavy wet rooms where you want a moment of warmth and human scale.

They read equally well at large format in double-height reception hallways and entrance lobbies, where the aspirational quality of the image gives an immediate narrative to the space, as they do clustered in a more intimate vignette above a console or within a dressing room setting. For hospitality and residential clients alike, there is an inherent lifestyle sell embedded in every frame. Aarons doesn't just decorate a room, he gives it a point of view."

View the full Slim Aarons Collection at Electric Gallery