Jane Tormey > Quotes

“Habermas states that ‘modernity revolts against the normalizing functions of tradition’ and persists in the habit of ‘rebelling against all that is normative’ (Habermas 1985: 5). He goes further and suggests that postmodernism is the most recent version of modernism and just another ‘abstract opposition between tradition and the present’ (1985: 4).”
― Jane Tormey, Cities and Photography

“Modernism defined itself through the exclusion of mass culture, and postmodernism renegotiates high and popular forms of culture. Modernism is characterized by a utopian desire and commitment to radical change, and postmodernism–which questions the presumptions of modernism–by critique, demystification and the significance of difference.”
― Jane Tormey, Cities and Photography

“The streets of the poor quarter of great cities are, above all, a theatre and a battle ground. There unaware and unnoticed every human being is a poet, a marker, a warrior, a dancer and in his innocent artistry he projects against the turmoil of the street, an image of human existence. (from an introduction to the film In the Street (1945–46) by James Agee, Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb in the streets of Harlem, New York)”
― Jane Tormey, Cities and Photography

“A specular perspective of the city demonstrates the voyeurship of both the viewer as spectator, and the photographer as auteur.”
― Jane Tormey, Cities and Photography

“The fact is, when I look in the viewfinder, if I do see it as a picture, I’ll do something to change it. Because, in the end, the pictures that you see when you’re working are the pictures that you know already. Either somebody else’s made them, or you’ve done it already. I’m not interested in that. (quoted in MOMA 2001:”
― Jane Tormey, Cities and Photography