Agfacolor
2018–2019
Agfacolor is a slide film that made color photography possible starting in the late 1930s. The series emerged from research on RAL standard colors: archives were examined for original color photographs from World War II, revealing Agfacolor slides by German propaganda troops. However, these photographs proved unsuitable for reconstructing historical colors — the chemical layers of the film material had changed over the decades and proved unstable.
This impossibility of reconstruction became the starting point for the series.
Selected Works
Installation Views

Installation 'Haunt Saison', frontviews at Haunt, Berlin, 2025

Studio shot, 2020

Studio shot, 2019

Photo: Sandra Ratkovic
Texts on the Series
- Philipp Hindahl, 2019For his series "Agfacolor", Carsten Becker focuses on moments that make it impossible for photographs to disguise their voice. The artist presents image sections from color photos he discovered in archives, taken by soldiers of German propaganda troops. He closes in on details and the enhancement lends an aesthetic quality to the ageing marks, the tinting and scratches of the film material – a quality beyond the original photographer’s control.
Simulacrum
Patrick Alt, 2019Carsten Becker’s works explore absence and lost image worlds. By reconstructing colors and selecting specific sections of images, he makes the past experienceable again, focusing on the origin and context of these images rather than the motifs themselves.Trauma Through Time
Ina Filla, 2019The interview with neuroscientist Ina Filla, PhD, explores the concept of transgenerational trauma, focusing especially on the Holocaust. It explains how traumatic experiences can be transmitted across generations through epigenetic mechanisms, socialization, and bonding. Filla outlines the biological basis of these transmission pathways based on current research, including animal studies, and discusses the complex psychological and societal impacts of inherited trauma.





















