The Resorts of Slim Aarons, Then and Now

The photographer Slim Aarons introduced the world in the most direct way possible to the plain loveliness of luxury. It began in the 1950s with his work for Holiday, the magazine that glamorized, intellectualized, and foregrounded global travel during its run from 1946 to 1977. Aarons traveled to the resorts and villas favored by the global elite of the time and in shooting them, established a visual language for a good life so appealing to look at that hardly anyone could summon the impulse to resist it.

His depictions of oceanfront resorts, in particular, established the aspirational nature of jet-setting seaside luxury as we came to know it in the late 20^th century, centered in Amalfi or Acapulco or the French Riviera.

I am repulsed and charmed by Slim Aaron’s unqualified celebration of wealth and glamour. Repulsed because it foreshadows the vulgar excesses of the second Gilded Age we’re currently living through. And also because from one angle, his work looks like a direct precursor to the travel aesthetic of Instagram in the 2010s. I’m charmed because of his aesthetic flirtation with me, the viewer. He is frank in his seduction, never cheesy, never ugly, and never narcissistic—One major difference between Aarons and the Instagram crowd is that his subjects were other people, not himself.