The desire to reproduce natural colours in photography is almost as old as the medium itself. Today, colour photography has become something we take for granted, just as AI-generated synthetic images are becoming increasingly commonplace. But how were ‘natural’ colours technically created throughout the history of photography? How have the categories of ‘natural’ and ‘synthetic’ gradually merged in the world of colour photography? And finally, how has the photography industry influenced our visual habits and the way in which we perceive the artificial worlds of colour imagery as natural?

The photographic project ‘Natürliche Farben’ focuses on the history of the German photographic products company AGFA (1867–2005) and, drawing on various archives relating to ‘Agfacolor, the film of natural colours’, explores its popularisation and its effects on our perception of photography. Using the numerous pieces of tourist, vernacular and advertising material found in the Casa Planas archive, the artist opens a Spanish chapter of this project, which questions the claims of naturalness and colour fidelity espoused by the photographic industry.