This is one of the touching emails we received this week. It comes from photographer AnnMarie Tornabene.
During the holidays, my husband and I had COVID and then I developed what was called Long COVID which meant that I was no longer contagious but had lingering symptoms which included serious fatigue where I was not able to do anything at all except eat and sleep. I also had body aches throughout and both of these symptoms lasted more than a month after my initial COVID diagnosis. (I am vaccinated by the way). I am better now and I did manage to do a little bit of photographic work during this period.
Before I move on to what is new photographically, I must take a moment to give a huge thank you to my new subscribers! It really is touching and validating to have so many people interested in my work and as difficult as it is these days to be “seen”, I constantly work at what I do and promote it as much as I can.
So, having said that, in photographic news, My Body Collective- the autobiography that I have created is almost at the end of the translation process. It is my dear husband, who spent the last 2 years passing from his 23-year career as a quality manager in the field of audiovisual post-production to translator working in the same domaine, who is doing the translation. I am extremely proud and happy that he is doing this for me. I have also found a different print company who I will be using as opposed to the original printing house, simply due to costs.
For those of you who are new, I wrote/created this book as an accompaniment to my 25 years of self-portraits. It includes my story of how and why I specialize in that form of photography and includes photographs I have taken of myself to illustrate how I physically changed during my photographic years. The story is a bit difficult as it recounts the abuse that I have endured with the focus on my appearance, the trauma and the effects that was created and how I use all of it in my work. I had launched a Kickstarter campaign last Fall in order to gain funding to have the book published but didn’t make the finish line. I will be relaunching the campaign in the early Spring so please stay tuned for that.
I am also still working on Les Peintures II and am looking into more exhibition opportunities for this summer. You can find almost all of the final images on my website for both Les Peintures and Les Peintures II but here are a couple of the latest.
AnnMarie Tornabene
After publishing AnnMarie Tornabene’s series Les Peintures, she continued the series presenting it as Les Peintures II. AnnMarie Tornabene has dedicated her artistic life to the realm of self-portrait photography originally as a means to help her accept her body as an overweight woman. Although her work evolved over the last 25 years to explore more psychological and spiritual themes, the theme of this series, Les Peintures, has returned full circle, to focus again on her appearance, but now combined with an internal psychological struggle that she has with both her body and mind as they both age, transform and also shows effects of her psychological state. She incorporates textures/marks onto her body and the overall image to show the battle of her strengths and weaknesses, creating a depth that goes well beneath the surface. With inspirations from paintings from the Old Masters as well as more contemporary expressionism, AnnMarie tries to balance the amount of texture/marks, symbols and the poses to express that battle.
Visit her website for more than 25 years of her self-portraiture – www.annmarietornabene.net
