THE GOOD LIFE: SLIM AARONS

If you wanted a taste of the poolside and polka-dot jet-set era of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, photographer Slim Aarons was the singular lens into this enchanted—and rarefied— world. treats! takes you on a pre-SPF journey back to a lost Aaronsian time.

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 Post World War II Los Angeles was still a frontier town in many ways: miles of orange, avocado and lemon trees stretched uninterrupted from the Valley all the way to Malibu. Water, for the vast farmlands, was as precious a commodity as oil as the California dreamin’ mirage was slowly coming into focus. Sound had come to Tinseltown Movies a decade earlier, and the stars doing the talking were now scooping up beach bungalows from Santa Monica to Malibu, building sprawling estates in Bel-Air, Garden of Eden-esque leafy compounds to indulge the newly minted jet-setters wildest fantasies. And that meant swimming pools.

Although the first “great baths” originated in modern-day Pakistan, and were perfected by the ancient Greeks and Romans in the first century BC., Los Angeles took the art of the pool to dizzying bacchanalian heights in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Perfumed by starlets’ Chanel Nº 5, sweet bougainvillea, tangy jasmine and fresh tanning lotion, the backyard pool parties of the rich and connected were opaline-dipping playgrounds oozing sex and seduction—and if you were one of the lucky ones to get invited to such weekend soirées you were treated like the bronzed gods and goddesses of yesteryear. The perfect place for a young and ambitious photographer to soak up the enchantment—and have a bit of fun himself.

George Allen “Slim” Aarons was a World War II photographer who, for capturing all the blood and guts on the beaches and battlefields all over Europe, was awarded a Purple Heart. His photos were among the first to capture the gore of battle, changing America’s image of death on the battlefield forever. Having seen enough carnage and wonton destruction to last lifetimes, the young photographer decided it was time to bathe in the beauty of California. He, in turn, became obsessed with chronicling the good life, as lived by the upper classes, lionized and aristocracy. However, just as much as luminaries as Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, James Stewart and Grace Kelly made his camera burn, it was the cool swimming pools that were really his muse—the blue waters of liberation that sat at the center of the swirling social activities that orbited its tepid and alluring waters.

Everything changed, however, in the mid-to-late 1980s. Baby oil became the devil, chlorine the great skin and hair ager, photographers the mortal enemy, pools the norm, and AIDS the new plague. Many of the great pools dried up, or became strictly family affairs: The infamous den of sin and seduction, the Garden of Allah, in Hollywood, where its oval-shaped pool was the crossroads for extra-marital affairs, Hollywood mogul casting lounges, lesbian orgies and nude sunbathing was torn down; the Playboy Mansion was now booked with kids parties; the free-swinging titans of industry died or became fat, lazy greed pigs; the Hearst Castle became a museum; Hollywood Hills pool parties were now quaint BBQs run by Herb Ritts’ mother; gargantuan private yachts with tinted windows became the new playground for the jet-set elite; and the Internet brought all of the world’s troubles to our cell phones every second of every sunny pool day. Slim Aarons got a glimpse of this new play-it-safe world before he passed away, and I can’t imagine he was too thrilled. However, he wasn’t one to complain or judge; he had lived the life of the ultimate voyeur into the world of the modern day deities, saw as many pink flamingo sunsets and Hermés swim suits as any man could ever dream; his office was his chaise lounge, his subjects splashing and cavorting in front of him like stylized mermaids and mermen, his ever-present camera sucking it all in and blowing it all out for the world to see—and dream.

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