Decorators deploy any number of secret weapons to create memorable rooms. One of Charlotte Moss’s, surprisingly enough, is a Canon EOS 5D Mark II digital camera. As visitors to the International Fine Art & Antique Dealers Show will see when the annual event opens to the public on Friday, October 19, at the Seventh Regiment Armory in Manhattan, Moss’s snapshots of glorious gardens transport a gloomy corner of the Gothic Revival building’s vaulted drill hall to the limpid French countryside.

“Traditionally the show’s café has always been claustrophobic—black, dark, not cheerful,” says Moss, a skilled amateur photographer, of the space, which is run by blue-chip caterers Glorious Food. “But I wanted it to have a sense of openness and air. It should be a place where you go and collect your wits, where you spend time celebrating—or contemplating—a new acquisition with a glass of Champagne.” The airy concept, the interior designer explains, grew out of restful moments she has spent on shopping trips to Paris, seated “on a bench in the Place Dauphine, beneath trees and surrounded by art galleries.”

Measuring 53 feet long by 31 feet deep, the café is paneled with Moss’s panoramic views of tidy parterres and extravagant topiaries at three noble French estates: Château de Breteuil in the Vallée de Chevreuse and Château de Hautefort and Le Vieux Logis (a Relais & Châteaux hotel), both in the Dordogne. Each romantic landscape—where sapphire skies meet emerald boxwood clipped into towering pyramids and plump spheres—has been blown up to majestic proportions, sliced into sections stretching nearly 10 feet high, printed on canvas, and installed on the café’s walls to create a virtual jardin. Amplifying the plein air atmosphere will be linen-draped tables topped with boxwood spheres planted in willow baskets and banked by classic bentwood chairs.

The International Fine Arts & Antique Dealers Show kicks off Thursday, October 18, with the annual preview party hosted by the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. (All proceeds benefit the MSKCC.) Moss and Margaret Russell, the editor in chief of Architectural Digest, serve as the show’s Design Committee Chairmen. To purchase tickets to the party, call the office of the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center at 212-639-7972. For information about the show, which runs through October 25, go to Haughton International Fairs at haughton.com.