A defining photographer who truly captured an era of elegance, leisure, and the art of living well.
Today we celebrate the birthday of Slim Aarons — born George Allen Aarons on October 29, 1916 — a photographer whose images defined an era of luxury, leisure and style.
Early life and beginnings
Slim Aarons was born in New York City to immigrant parents, and his early life was far from the glamorous settings he would later photograph. He spent part of his childhood in modest circumstances, at times with relatives and in an orphanage, before eventually serving in the U.S. Army. At age 18, he enlisted, and during World War II he worked as a combat photographer, including assignments for the magazine Yank. He was wounded in action and awarded the Purple Heart. It was through this experience that Slim returned to the U.S. and traded battlefields for beaches, ballrooms, resorts and country manors.
Transition to photographing the good life
After the war, Aarons moved into civilian life and shifted his focus dramatically. He relocated to California, and began photographing celebrities, high society, resorts, and places of leisure. He worked for prominent magazines of the era — including Life, Holiday, Town & Country, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Travel & Leisure. His hallmark became the phrase (often attributed to him): “attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.”
His rise to prominence
While many photojournalists were focusing on war, social issues or documentary realism, Aarons focused on the affluent, the glamorous, the vacation-world elite. He captured scenes of Palm Springs, the Italian Riviera, the Caribbean, Hollywood parties — places rarely seen in mainstream photography of the time.
Aarons wasn’t just an outside observer; he cultivated personal relationships with his subjects and moved within their world. As one article states: “They would invite me to one of their parties, because they knew I wouldn’t hurt them. I was one of them.”
His images often feel effortless — no heavy staging, no overt fashion-mechanics (though of course style is present). He preferred available light, worked with minimal gear, and allowed his subjects to appear natural in luxurious settings. His work provided viewers with a window into a world of leisure that was aspirational. His images still feel like invitations to a timeless good life: sun-drenched, resort-style, thrill-free. As one writer puts it, Aarons “reduced the essence of a vanishing age into its tincture.”
Lasting Impressions
Though he passed away in 2006 (on May 30 2006) at age 89, Aarons’s influence remains strong. On his birthday, we celebrate not just the “beautiful images of beautiful people in beautiful places,” but the photographer who made that world his own, shaped its visual memory, and left us a remarkable archive of mid-century glamour.Happy birthday, Slim Aarons. Your prominence has been forever cemented as one of the defining photographers who truly captured an era—a timeless chronicler of elegance, leisure, and the art of living well.