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Sometimes there are images and texts that particularly touch you. That's the case with this portfolio!

(Les Peintures series 2019)

- Jean-Jacques Naudet - L'oeil de la Photographie Magazine

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AnnMarie Tornabene's work leaves no one indifferent! What's more, it's not classifiable. The artist takes us into a dreamlike world where, like Narcissus amusing herself with her own image, she reveals the different facets of her self. Her face is often replaced by that of an animal... And yet, behind the symbol, we sense that she is revealing her animal side. This artifice provides a synthesis with a very ancient world, hidden deep within us, which we seek to conceal and which still directs our innermost feelings. A mysterious world that the gods tried - in vain - to submerge under the Flood. For the life force of this fallen kingdom has always haunted mankind...

AnnMarie Tornabene has had the courage to open up a little of the deep mystery of her soul. In her "Allegories", photos become paintings, paintings come to life and... life expresses itself in the photo. This is surrealism we're talking about. (Allegory series 2017-2018)

- Phillipe Litzler - OpenEye Magazine

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(Translated from Italian).

In AnnMarie Tornabene's work there is consistency. Themes and subjects are woven together into the same theme; and do not deviate from the task of telling a dream universe or describing the terms of an esoteric world that, as far as we can tell ourselves, we are absorbed in the porosity of our formation; and all kept together by the silent presence of a medium known to us through the History of Art: the angels..

The journey around the theme of death is complemented by every interpreter, and we only have to consolidate some conclusions, though AnnMarie Tornabene will share how ephemeral is every attempt to "explain" death. Yet her effort is more than praiseworthy, her work is surrounded by a painful and delicate poetics like her images that evoke suggestions from the depths. Nothing is overlooked, form and substance dialogue with the pursuit of meaning, a sense that pleases the eyes but does not neglect the thought.

- Giuseppe Cicozzetti - Scriptphotography

 

AnnMarie was always a favorite winner in the B J Spoke Gallery's competitions and shows. Her work was highly original and well produced. We also liked that she was an early advocate for liking one's self image and supporting women in that idea. Her body of work is unforgettable.

Thanks - A-M T

- Marilyn Levy - gallery director and manager B.J. Spoke Gallery, New York

 

I was at first shocked and then intrigued by AnnMarie Tornabene’s revealing self-portraits, all of which show the artist nude outdoors. But these are not ordinary nudes, for Ms. Tornabene’s body is so ample that sitting in water or reclining in nature, she looks like a soft sculpture.

A statement in the exhibition brochure gives some clue to her thinking. She speaks of the images as responding to issues she has experienced in her life: abuse directed at her obesity, problems with sex and relationships, and anxieties about her self-image in a society that rewards and celebrates one body type to the exclusion and ridicule of others. She bravely asks us to look, and look again, to find beauty in her size. And she succeeds.

- Benjamin Genocchio - NY Times

 

To view a photograph by AnnMarie Tornabene is akin to studying a chapter in art history. One senses immediately the Old Master pedigree behind many of her images. What is it about AnnMarie's photographs that set them apart from her art historical sources? The first and most obvious is the medium itself, photography, a thoroughly modern art form, though, that is not meant to over-simplify the point. Tornabene's aesthetic is anything but modern; the photographs are statements against contemporary and digital art, hence their rich art historical lineage.

- Dr. Stephen Lamia, PhD - gallery director, The Anthony Girodano Gallery, New York

 

Edward Weston once said of a contemporary that "He doesn't have to try to be different -- he *is* different." That's what I see in her work as opposed to most -- she is not trying to be different, she is trying to say something important to her and the result is that her work *is* different.

- Ron Hammond, photographer

 

AnnMarie Tornabene examines the specifics of her own face and form as the terrain of conflict. Her series of self-portraits seeks to resolve confusion through revelation, although hesitancy and ambivalence are evident in these touching images.

- Helen Harrison - NY Times