This was part of a joint B/W exhibition by five Curaçao photographers in Kas di Alma Blou, 1998. Now I have been shooting on Kodacolor negative whenever I could, also for B/W work, ever since Dakota. But as I wanted to give the People What They Wanted, I took old B/W negatives made in my twenties. It was amazing how many contained girls; the subject matter seems to have tickled my fancy. So there I was, all set.

People often talk about how fine B/W is, but they never seem to turn the color out of their tv-set. I feel my color work is much better, myself. I scanned those negs with a Tamron Foto-Vix and (no kidding!) a Snappy, and printed them out on a Canon bubble-jet printer. Then already, nobody noticed the difference with a "real" photograph. Well, there isn't - the computer print merely does not contain silver, just like any color photo. But at that time, you had these tiresome discussions going about whether digital imaging could ever replace chemical photography. I didn't know if it could, only that it would—and that digital imaging ended the whole B/W vs. color discussion: you can have it as you like it.

What really amuses me is when photographers proudly state they have not done any digital manipulation. Big deal!

One of the esteemed members of the press remarked that, if (giving you the gist) I did not completely endorse the idea of B/W photography being the most fabulous thing you could do, I had no business in participating in this exposition. Now, can she really have been serious? This is of a pedantry only critics (or school teachers) can afford themselves. And even then: if Michelangelo deep down liked sculpting better than painting, he shouldn't have done that Sixtine chapel ceiling?