Fashion and tourism

At the beginning of 1948, back in Paris, Capa became more interested in Christian Dior, creator of the New Look, and the top models like Bettina Graziani and Suzy Parker with whom he worked, than in existentialism, political tensions and even the bebop genius Charlie Parker. He was living in style: skiing, horse races, poker, parties… He had taken up residence on Paris’s rive droite at the Hotel Lancaster, located between the Bar des Théâtres and the Magnum offices on rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré where he worked. Always on the lookout for assignments from American magazines (This Week, Holiday, Harper’s Bazaar), he focused entirely on fashion photography, even to the extent of making documentaries about the great designers, albeit with no great success.

Capa earned his money in New York and spent it in Paris. He had found a magnificent magazine in which to exercise all these talents: it was called Holiday, was American and would pay for his vacations at ski resorts and in Deauville, Biarritz and Budapest. Its pages published Capa’s photographs in black and white and colour, but most importantly what he wrote. In a long article about the best places to spend the summer, he explained that the owner of Harry’s Bar in Paris and his favourite waitress Anna had been told that in high society circles, come mid-July, it was de rigueur to take the micheline, as the train was known at the time, to Deauville, where there was champagne, gambling, horse races and beautiful women.