Slim Aarons: La Dolce Vita

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• Publisher: Abrams
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781419700606
• eBook ISBN: 9781613122167
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Photography

This lavish fourth volume in Abrams' Slim Aarons collection revels in this photographer's decades-long love affair with Italy. From breathtaking aerials of the Sicilian countryside to intimate portraits of celebrities and high society taken in magnificent villas, Slim Aarons: La Dolce Vita captures the essence of ';the good life.' Slim Aarons first visited Italy as a combat photographer during World War II and later moved to Rome to shoot for Life magazine, yet even after relocating to New York, he would return to Italy almost every year for the rest of his life.The images collected here document the aristocracy, cultural elite, and beautiful people, such as Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress, Joan Fontaine, and Tyrone Power, who lived la dolce vita in Italy's most fabulous places during the last 50 years. The introduction by Christopher Sweet shares stories from Aarons's years in Italy and new insights about his life and career.Praise for Slim Aarons: La Dolce Vita: ';Nostalgia-soaked images.' Harper's Bazaar';Sumptuous images.' Publishers Weekly';It's the next best thing to time travel.' DuJour magazine

It was in postwar Rome that Slim Aarons realized his
professional mission in life: to photograph, in his now
famous phrase, “attractive people who were doing attractive
things in attractive places.” The photographer had survived
World War II, witnessing the fall of Tobruk, the Anzio
invasion, and the liberation of Rome, and had come
away from it with a distinct aversion to war, a career as
a photojournalist, and a passion for Italy. After leaving
the army for a brief stint in Hollywood, he relocated to
Rome when Life magazine opened a bureau there. In
those luminous late 1940s, when Rome and the world
were coming back to life, Slim Aarons discovered his great
subject: the cavalcade of high society and aristocracy
and celebrity—and the settings where this special class
of people displayed themselves to best effect. The Beautiful
People who flocked to Rome in those years would become
Slim Aarons’s principal subjects for the next fifty years. Italy
too would be an enduring theme, as he would return year
in and year out to photograph the aristocracy, the cultural
elite, and the international jet set who found sanctuary
in the country’s most beautiful places. And when in Rome,
he would always take the same room at the Excelsior Hotel
as he had when he lived there in the 1940s.

Tracing a journey from the 1940s to the 1990s, this lavish
fourth volume in Abrams’s Slim Aarons collection revels
in this photographer’s love affair with Italy—its magnificent
cities and towns and landscapes, its fashionable resorts, the
pleasures of the Italian art of living—and offers a glimpse
into the lives of its preeminent families in formal and
informal circumstances, photographed in their palaces
and on their estates, at their vacation villas and in other
favorite haunts. The images collected in this book paint
the cultural geography of fifty years in Italy and distill one
photographer’s vision of la dolce vita. The introduction
by Christopher Sweet shares stories from Aarons’s years
in Italy and new insights about his life and career.

SLIM AARONS ♦ LA DOLCE VITA

SLIM AARONS ♦ LA DOLCE VITA

CHRISTOPHER SWEET

Getty Images
Abrams, New York

AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
At Getty Images, New York: Eric Rachlis, Michelle Graham, and Jodi Einhorn
At Getty Images, London: Sarah McDonald, Matthew Butson, Luigi Di Dio, Dan Hawkins, and Rich Davies
At Abrams: Steve Tager, Andrea Danese, Scott Auerbach,...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Back Cover