Photonovels
1 October, 1968
A discredited genre wherever it is, the photonovel flourished and died in a space of ten years in Spain.
For those of us who were lucky enough to participate in the photonovel, they were a tool which helped us to practice sequences, continuity, framing and lots of other things which were very useful later when considering an illustration or a painting. It also opened us up to photography, and for quite a while I was taking photos for the covers of the series Corín Tellado, Gótica and Hit. Corín Tellado was the bad one, Gótica was the “quality” one, and Hit was groundbreaking: the first Hit was photographed in London, in the atmosphere of Carnaby and swinging London. Hit was a photonovel, but it was also an ultramodern music magazine with its hit-parade (from which the title takes its name), biographies of singers and everything that was top fashion at the time. It coincided with the explosion in Barcelona of Tuset Street, a copy (or echo…) on a local level of the London phenomenon. Singers like Georgie Dann, Tony Ronald, Raphael, Massiel, Salomé, Joan Manuel Serrat agreed to appear in Hit…In Corín Tellado and Gótica names such as Margit Kocsis appeared; she was an artist and painter (the legendary blonde who was bareback riding a horse called “Nevado” in the ad for Terry cognac and had millions of adolescents daydreaming). Two great actresses, Silvia Tortosa and Mercè Briquetas. Encarnita Pacheco…
In Hit I also formatted the model of the magazine, the lay-outs, the montage, and the cover photos.
