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[klassobanieras]

Hello!

This very cool Henri Cartier-Bresson photo came up on Reddit recently:

http://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks/comments/2p4ck2/a_challenge_for_you_identify_the_book_xpost_from/

Does anyone recognise the comic in the photo or have any pointers where to look? I already had a fairly thorough trawl through the Western section but couldn't spot a match. The photo's from 1947 which narrows things down quite a bit, as does the thickness of the comic.

It's a long shot I know, but I thought it couldn't hurt to ask

[crashryan]

This is an intriguing photograph. I was struck by a couple of things. First, the magazine's pages are larger than those of the typical American comic book. Second, the images appear "three dimensional"--that is, they seem to be photographs or fully-painted illustrations. This leads me to wonder if this could be one of those Italian graphic magazines which later evolved into the photo-novels Americans call "fumetti" (in Italian the word refers to comics in general).

Here's a link to a site about Walter Molino. http://www.liceoberchet.it/storia/waltermolino1915-1997/grandhotel.html He was a talented and prolific Italian illustrator/comic artist. It shows pages from "Grand Hotel," an Italian weekly featuring serialized romance stories painted in a photo-realistic style. "Grand Hotel" was active during the late 1940s . I've seen examples from 1947. So I'm wondering...

Could the woman be holding a similar magazine? Italian and French magazines could have found their way to Mississippi via New Orleans. It's hard to tell, but her magazine appears to be a Western. All the photo-real comics I've seen have been romances, but I suppose there could have been Westerns too.

Another possibility is that this is a photo-novel adaptations of a movie. I have a couple early Italian examples. The panels are frame blowups from the movie with pasted-over balloons. However the ones I have date from the early 1950s and I'm not sure movie photo-comics were published as early as 1947.

It's conceivable that Frenchman Cartier-Bresson may have brought the magazine with him to the shoot. It wouldn't be the first time a photo-journalist provided a subject with a prop. It's all very interesting.

[klassobanieras]

Wow, that's pretty fascinating...

If nothing else it was a good excuse to trawl through some 40's western comics, and now it's a good excuse to keep my eye out for graphic mags from the 40's too, I like the idea that someday I'll happen across it and it'd be especially interesting to know if the origin hints whether the comic was more likely hers or Bresson's.

Anyway, thoughts much appreciated (and forwarded to the original Reddit post FWIW)