Capa in peacetime

The Second World War had ended. What would Capa do now? He had been covering battlefields since 1936. He would also say, “A war photographer’s most fervent wish is for unemployment.” In 1945, having begun a relationship with Ingrid Bergman, he travelled to the United States to work in Hollywood. He had never given up his idea of creating an agency, and in 1947 Magnum Photos was founded as a photographers’ cooperative to protect its members’ interests vis-à-vis the press. Capa had acquired US citizenship the year before and amused himself by photographing film shoots for Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston. He also did photo reports on his friends, such as Pablo Picasso on the beach and Ernest Hemingway hunting.

At the same time, he had to try and keep the agency afloat: finances were tight and further compounded by his gambling losses. Still working with two formats, 24×36 and 6×6, he branched out into fashion photography. He was able to give free rein to his talents thanks to the splendid and aptly-named Holiday magazine, which financed his vacations at ski resorts and places like Deauville, Biarritz and even Budapest. These little-known reports feature articles written by Capa himself and colour photographs. In 1947 he also published a curious and somewhat fictionalised autobiography under the title Slightly out of Focus, in which he described his life as a photojournalist up to the end of the Second World War.