In its popular form, its parentage is to be found in the cinema (and particularly the ciné-roman, stills ‘narrated’ by extracts from the script) and the bande dessinée. The magazine serial roman-photo had its immediate origins in Italy, in 1947, and was transplanted into France in 1949 by the publishers Aldo and Cino Del Duca. Part of the presse du cœur, it subscribes to the conventions of romantic fiction (the roman rose), but allows excursions into the territory of the roman policier [see Detective Fiction].
The serious photo-roman, on the other hand, appeared only in the 1980s, as a development of the experimentalism of the Nouveau Roman, intent on exploring the frictions between narrative and isolated image, the symbolic and the referential; this line of enquiry is represented by the work of H. Guibert (Suzanne et Louise, 1980; Le Seul Visage, 1984), B. Peeters and M.-F. Plissart (Fugues, 1983; Droits de regard, 1985; Le Mauvais Œil, 1986) and, more recently, C. Bruel and X. Lambours (La Mémoire des scorpions, 1991).
[Clive Scott]
