There is no photographer who captured the elegance of the sport—and lifestyle—of skiing than Slim Aarons, the society photographer who chronicled the rich and famous throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Born to Jewish immigrants in a Lower East Side tenement, Aarons began his career as a combat photographer for the United States Military during World War II. In peacetime, he headed to Los Angeles, where he soon found himself turning his lens on the glamorous figures of Old Hollywood.
By the 1960s, by his own admission, Aarons was regularly “photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places,” for magazines like Life and Holiday. And many of those attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places were in the mountains: The ’60s were a decade that saw skiing, especially in the Americas, go mainstream. He captured European princesses in Gstaad and businessmen in Squaw Valley, chefs preparing snowside feasts in Courchevel and skiers having a fondue picnic in Aspen. In the process, he slowly built an archive that defines the very idea of an Alpine aesthetic.
Below, find 34 of our favorite Slim Aaron’s skiing photos—perhaps they will even inspire your own slopeside style.
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