The Great Escape

While for many mid-century artists the end of World War II inspired works of chaos, anguish and inarticulate rage, Slim Aarons took victory in Europe as an opportunity to leave behind all he had seen and suffered as a war photographer for Yank magazine during the conflict. Trading rations and battlefields for bellinis and tanning beds, he quickly insinuated himself into the most exclusive circles, documenting the opulent lifestyles of the rich and famous and producing a mass of sun-kissed images, collected for the first time in the classic 1974 book A Wonderful Time: An Intimate Portrait of the Good Life. His carefree images were assembled for an exhibition at London’s Getty Images Gallery last year, but for all who missed that, and are wistfully looking ahead to a summer lounging by the pool, NOWNESS presents a selection of Aarons’s best-loved images.