You recently started experimenting

You recently started experimenting with digital cameras. What are the biggest differences between analogue and digital photography? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

They are two completely different things. With analogue photography you always have this mystery of what will be the outcome in the end, you don’t see directly what you photographed. Using digital cameras there is no process, the result is there immediately and I can’t do the printing myself – something that is very important to me. I’m not a big fan of technology and computers. I need to spend time in the darkroom, I need the physical act of developing the picture myself.

So you never use digital cameras?

Sometimes I do, some of the big prints in the Leuven exhibition are made with a digital camera. I also combine both methods from time to time. For example I take pictures with a very small camera or even a mobile phone and then photograph them again on the screen with an analogue camera. I like to experiment and I’ve never followed the common rules of photography. But yes, I prefer the analogue way – a very nostalgic reaction, I know.


Is digital photography changing photography as an artform?

Many young photographers nowadays first look at all the technical possibilities and then think about the image – in my opinion that is the wrong approach. I first come up with an idea and then I choose the tool to realise it with. But with all the possibilities opening up through digital technology this is changing into the other direction.