Marina Planas’ grandfather founded his photography empire in Palma in 1940. “He also had a great influence on tourism with it," she explains. This is evidenced by various photographs that show the different and varied landscapes of the island. You can see deserted bays, popular beaches, lush orange and olive plantations and pictures of the old town of Palma. “My grandfather created the first photo postcards of the time and introduced colour photography to the Balearic Islands," Planas explains. All this led, among other things, to the island attracting more and more interest from foreign citizens. Over the course of time, the development of the island became visible in the photographs: Mallorca tourism boomed, foreign holidaymakers were photographed more and more often.

Today, Casa Planas serves not only as a photo archive. Over the years, it has become a cultural centre with 17 artists' studios, an event space and coworking opportunities and the most important photo archive in Europe. Since 2017, an international programme for artistic research residencies has been funded to revitalise the photo archive in an innovative way. Casa Planas works closely with the German Goethe-Institut.

Through her centre’s projects, Marina Planas hopes to preserve her grandfather’s cultural legacy in the future: “We will do everything we can to continue to protect this precious heritage.”

Find out more in the video