Dovima with Elephants, 1955

This variation of Dovima with Elephants, offered here as a rare, vintage print, first appeared in the 1955 Harper’s Bazaar issue alongside the more widely known, vertical image. In this stunning variation, Dovima poses in a different Dior Dress, elegantly and yet playfully echoing the movement of the elephants' trunks and seemingly choreographed steps.
His white georgette crepe dress descends in gentle winding folds below a bosom banded in black velvet and marked with a huge white role. These pages photographed at the Cirque d'Hiver, where Sir Carol Reed is currently filming Trapeze (Harper's Bazaar, September 1955).
The model chosen to star in this famous photoshoot was Bronx-born Dorothy Virginia Margaret Juba, known professionally as Dovima. A sharp and sophisticated beauty, Dovima was appreciated by leading photographers of the day for her ability to assume a role and project herself effortlessly in front of a camera. In marked contrast to the static studio poses that characterized so much fashion photography of the 1930s and 40s, Dovima moved dynamically within her frame. She brought a theatricality and drama to her modeling, a perfect collaborator for Avedon who was himself a lifelong devotee of the performing arts. Like many of Avedon’s best fashion work, the image could be a still from a film, perhaps even a freeze-frame from a movie’s dance scene, with Dovima and the elephants captured in perfect unison.