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A genre long associated with the expression of sentimental drama, the photonovel has also been essentially approached in this way by academic research. This article aims to relativize this dominant expectation by considering, from the years of its greatest success, the existence of a photonovel “deviating from the inside,” conveying pastiches, irony, détournements, and visual experiments without detaching itself from the media form traditionally devoted to the genre—the family and/or women’s magazine press of the 1950s–1970s. Centered on the career of photographer and documentary filmmaker Richard Olivier (1945–2021), director of a dozen photonovels in his early years, we will examine both the conditions of access to this genre by young audiovisual creators and, in return, the contamination of this genre by the transitory (and sometimes alimentary) practice that these creators made of it. We will also show the evolution of the editorial discourse of a certain women’s press, which, by loosening the grip of its old domestic model, was able to welcome the renewal of photonovels, inspired by the new popular culture and endowed with a certain amount of self-reflexivity.