JF cherche ... Photography: Antonio Caballero, Las Rutas de la Pasión, Mexico 1960's -1970's

Macaria, fotonovela para la revista “Capricho”, ca. 1970

"Fotonovela"; "photo-story" is the exact word that I will use to define the work of the photographer Antonio Caballero. When I saw his exhibition at Sikkema, Jenkins & Co's gallery, I felt somewhere like going to the theatre or leaf through a comic strip in a corner of a bookstore.
So, it is not a coincidence that Antonio Caballero is regarded as one of the greatest photographer of fotonovelas in the 60's and the 70's in Mexico. He was born in 1940 in Mexico City. He discovered the photography when his step-father bought him a Brownie Fiesta camera and during his adolecence he began his apprentice as a photojournalist.
Soon his photographs appeared in several well- know Mexican newspapers and magazines like Guerre al Crimen, Revista de Policia and Nota Roja.
In 1963 Caballero was introduced to the "fotonovelas", which are small graphic novels with storyboard format and dialogue bubbles that were popular in Italy, Spain and throughout Latin America from the 1940’s through the 1980’s.
He made no less than five hundred graphic novels between 1963 and 1978.
His fotovelas shows dramatic mise-en-scenes which suggest narratives of love, tragedy and suspense.
The exhibition is a testament to Antonio Caballero’s talent as a photographer and director that the individual photographs remain powerful on their own.