In 2018 I had the chance to talk about photo novels during the international conference ECHIC 2018 – Equip & Engage. Research and Dissemination Infrastructures for the Humanities. My presentation was preceded by two speeches, one about digitizing ancient papyri recently found in Egypt, the other on the digitization of works by Shakespeare. During the Q&A that followed the panel, the first question was for me: “Why photo novels?” This was a significant moment for two main reasons. On the one hand, it showed a still exist-ing bias towards popular culture. Nobody questioned whether digitizing ancient papyri or Shakespeare’s texts was a good idea; it was obvious that the answer was “yes”. The long tradition of academic studies on these matters, coupled with their immediate association with highbrow culture, made the study and attention dedicated to them clearly worth the effort. The same could not be said for photo novels. A popular genre, sentimental even, published in cheap magazines, clearly raised a few eyebrows. On the other hand, the ques-tion highlighted that photo novels were completely unknown to most of the audience. They are one of the most successful editorial phenomena of the postwar period, with more than thirty years of undiscussed popularity and millions of readers, and yet little to no research has been done on them. If anything, the question truly showed the urgency of research: photo novels have been forgotten despite their earlier popularity, and the gap needs to be filled in order to bring attention back to an essential phenomenon that char-acterized the postwar period and influenced a whole generation.