Poolside art photography collection | Limited editions for sale

Artist Aaron Knight strives to craft an image that is endlessly explorable on an aesthetic level. This is balanced with a visual celebration of sensuality. A desire for harmony between these two goals is seen throughout the project.

Often sparse and pinup-inspired, many of these contemporary images are blatantly flirtatious and depict a diverse assortment of women in a stirring, sometimes provocative style. This streamlined aesthetic is cinematic, rather than documentary.

The images carry an undertone of escapism that is associated with pop imagery but with a rebellious appetite for celebration. This series of images shows life in warm seasons, perhaps on vacation or an everyday occurrence. They often appear as though they were plucked from a larger narrative. These scenes can prompt us to speculate about the immediate past and impending events in the characters’ stories.

This collection is decidedly distinct from Knight’s series of photographs of nude swimmers. In this collection, swimmers are deliberately excluded. Although floating or paddling figures are not banned, each image depicts at least one person anchored on solid ground. In this way, the theme is as well defined by what it is not. And, in a sense, the Poolside compilation is a reaction to Knight’s earlier works where the water was a moving participant, embracing the body.

Sitting poolside, the body is unobscured by ripples or reflections. The water is enticing to the eye but sits untouched. The surface of the pool is smooth and unspoiled by movement, just as the figure is unaffected by the water. The viewer is given the concept of swimming, diving or otherwise being drenched, by expressing the possibility for it. The unrealized potential of the water can be read as a metaphor for the allure of the figure in that both remain pristine for the purpose of visual effect.

The poolside theme is hardly an invention of Knight. Many artists, both famous and obscure, have explored the motif. The topic recalls the photography of Slim Aarons (no relation), who often depicted the wealthy basking around luxurious swimming pools. A parallel is the iconic work of David Hockney, which employs similar subject matter to illustrate the relationship between material abundance and beauty, or Jay Lynn Gomez’s reinterpretation of the motif depicting the laborers who are the custodians of paradise. However, these obvious comparisons omit the many divergences and other artists who have delved into a poolside motif.

The influences for this collection are broad and deep. They include Helmut Newton’s poolside fashion images, still photographs of a fully nude Marilyn Monroe on the set of the 1962 movie Something's Got to Give, inspiring decades of such cinematic junkets. A range of painters and photographers before and since, such as Ellen von Unwerth and Franco Fontana, have built the long chronicle of nude poolside imagery. Many of the enduring design elements of the genre are apparent in Knight’s work.

The annals of fashion photography, inseparable from its sensual enticements, plays a vital role in the subconscious of creator and viewer alike. Printed pages sport playful and intoxicating characters who seem to be more central to the message than the clothes that are supposedly the product. Subtract the garments, and the topic becomes the poolside way of life, or the illusion of it. This collection of images makes no such pretense; the allure of the body is the clear purpose. The vulnerability of historical pinups has been replaced by the characters’ forthright engagement in the narratives.

The distinctions of Aaron Knight’s style include transporting the viewer into the fiction and the participation of the protagonist beyond a mere subject for the voyeur. A successful poolside artwork brings us the atmosphere of the image. We can feel the cool breeze and taste the air. This is the power of memory and imagination.