Slim Aarons, photographer of Beautiful People, dies

NEW YORK, Jun 2 (Reuters) Celebrity photographer Slim Aarons, who created iconic images of the international Jet Set and their country homes after surviving savage combat in World War II, has died in New York State at the age of 89.

His publisher said on Wednesday he had died on Tuesday from complications of a heart attack and a stroke.

Among Aarons' most famous images was ''The Kings of Hollywood,'' a picture of Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart laughing and sipping cocktails on New Year's Eve of 1957 at Romanoff's restaurant in Hollywood.

His third collection of photos ''Slim Aarons: A Place in the Sun,'' was published last December, winning a coveted starred review from Publishers Weekly.

''Flipping through the azure, emerald and sun-kissed pages of 'golden age' celebrity photographer Aarons's third collection of images, it's hard not to feel a certain nostalgia,'' the review said.

His editor Christopher Sweet wrote in the introduction to the book that Aarons defined ''the image of the Beautiful People -- the international Jet Set who strode the world's stage in the postwar decades like young gods.'' WORLD WAR TWO PHOTOGRAPHER It was not as a celebrity photographer that Aarons got his start -- he joined the army at the age of 18 and served as a combat photographer in Europe in World War II, earning a Purple Heart for injuries he sustained on the battle field.

After the war, he made his mark documenting high society for magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Life and Town and Country in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

''Aarons himself had been through WW II; is it any wonder, then, that when asked to cover Korea, he replied that the only beach he was interested in landing on was one decorated with beautiful semi-nude girls tanning in a tranquil sun?'' Publishers Weekly said in its review of his last book.

Sweet said Aarons was welcomed into the inner circles of society because of his charm and easy manners and his ability to make people look good.

''Without a stylist or a makeup artist and using only the available light, Slim portrayed them as they would present themselves. They were never isolated in a studio or abstracted by a blank backdrop,'' Sweet wrote in the book.

Aarons sold his archive to Getty Images in 1997.

''Noel Coward and Truman Capote used words to record this rarefied universe, but Mr. Aarons's photographs ... showed it,'' The New York Times said in its obituary.

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