Pinky Bass

Pinky M. M. Bass (born 1936) is an American photographer, known for her work in pinhole photography.

Bass, a resident of Fairhope, Alabama, has exhibited at a number of museums including the Ashville Art Museum, Birmingham Museum of Art, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Huntsville Museum of Art in Huntsville, Alabama, the Montgomery Museum of Art in Montgomery, Alabama, Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, Alabama, National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina among others. Well known for her work in pinhole photography, Bass has also been published in Aperture #115, 1989 and #141, 1995 (SAF/NEA Fellowship Supplement), Pinhole Journal and is in the collections of the Polaroid Corporation. Bass has taught numerous workshops in Pinhole camera across the United States including EMRYS Foundation, [1], Space One Eleven and University of Memphis among many others. Known for her portable pop-up pinhole cameras, The first of these cameras was a giant pinhole she made out of a pop-up camper -- "Pinky's Portable Pop-up Pinhole Camera and Darkroom".^[1] She made this piece for the "Itinerant Photography Project" in 1989.

Bass is listed in the Women in Photography, International Archive now housed at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

In March of 1997 Pinky Bass was honored by the Georgia Commission on Women for "Georgia Women in the Visual Arts".

[edit] Work

"For Donna'" Barrister's Gallery curated by Deborah Luster featured works by Pinky Bass, Ruth Marten, Danna Moore, Laura Noland-Hunter, Donna Service, Barrister's Gallery, New Orleans.

Bass' work was part of "The Lensless View: Contemporary Pinhole Photography" curated by Diana H. Bloomfield along with work by Rebecca Sexton Larson, Scott McMahon, Christopher Sims, Sarah Van Keuren and Sam Wang.

"The Enchanted Mishap", Explores the theme of chance accidents that produce surprising images, includes work by Pertti Saloheimo, Clint O'Connor and Pinky Bass. Pinhole Journal Vol 19 #1^[2]

In 2006 Bass work was included in "(Id) AN EXHIBITION OF SELF PORTRAITURE" along with Dieter Appelt, Judy Dater, Nate Larson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Constance Thalken and Bill Thoma.^[3]

Work by Bass was included in an exhibition called "Voices Rising: Alabama Women at the Millennium" by the Alabama State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.^[4] This exhibition was made into a video presentation (also called Voices Rising) that ran on Alabama Public Television,^[5]

Bass has had over 40 solo exhibitions, many of which travelled. In a Bass solo exhibition, "BodyWorks" at the University of Montevallo, Bloch Hall Gallery in Spring 2006,^[6] Bass again exhibited work that was unique to the female artist perspective. Much of Bass work is about metaphysical energy and how we intuitively understand ourselves.

In "On/of Paper" curated by Pieter Favier included artists from across the country illustrating the diversity of paper, a medium many art critics may overlook. Each artist featured used paper in some fashion to create their featured art., Bass showed a series of her hand-stitched photography at Space 301 in Mobile, Alabama.

Bass was recently included in "Politics, Politics: Nice Artists Explore the Political Landscape" curated by Anne Arrasmith and Peter Prinz of Space One Eleven. This exhibition was funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and included Clayton Colvin, Peggy Dobbins, Randy Gachet, binx Newton, Arthur Price, John Trobaugh, Paul Ware, and Stan Woodard.

From 1992 and until 2000, Pinky Bass was represented by Agnes gallery in Birmingham, Alabama.

Residency, Oregon School of Art and Craft, Portland OR 2004
Residency, Western Carolina University, Cullowee, NC 2000
Resen Ceramic Colony Residency (Catalog Photographer), Republic of Macedonia 1997
Souther Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship 1995
International Print Exhibition Award, Print Club, Philadelphia, PA 1990
Site Sculpture Grant "Big Box Camera", Arts Festival of Atlanta, GA 1990
Alabama Fellowship Grant, Alabama State Council on the Arts 1991
North Carolina Visual Arts Project Grant 1992
North Carolina Visual Artistic Fellowship Grant 1993
Interdisciplinary Grant (Regional Artist Project) for "The Itinerant Photographer" 1989
Artist Residency, Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY 1988

On pinhole photography . . . "I love the word integrity. It's not about being moral-- it's about being whole. So if the camera or the object that you are using to make the photograph has something to do with the image that comes out of it, then there's a lot of integrity there." - Pinky Bass, "Coat of Many Colors", APT

...the profile of a middle-aged woman (a self-portrait?) looks toward a fecund pregnant torso, which is heavily draped at the top, giving it universality: It could be any woman. The belly bulges, and the breasts are pendulous with milk for the coming infant. An unavoidable sexual element is presented here, but it is instantly recognized as a cultural construct, not the intent of the artist. The viewer is left to wonder what's happening in the mind of the older woman: Is she a mentor? Is she remembering her own body, distended with new life? More questions than answers here. -Connie Bostic^[7]

Pinky Bass turns the body inside out with the frankness of aging, the beauty of acceptance, and the power to adorn the experience of loss and continuance. -The Knight Gallery

"This Old House"", contains a great mix of light and shadow play. To look at this piece, the eye is led from the right side of the photo to the left, an unconventional viewpoint. The two subjects, an older, wrinkled woman and a dilapidated house, set each other off very effectively. One is led to find the connection between the aged, defeated old woman and the deteriorating house with an amazing clarity. -Vanessa Keber, Arts and Entertainment, Georgia Daily.

"I began stitching internal organs onto photographic images when my sister was dying of cancer. My son had died the year before and both my parents the year following. The accidental death of my friend and artist collaborator, Kitty Couch, drew me even deeper into myself and this intimate process of grieving /creating." - Pinky Bass^[8]

"Tangle of Complexes: Photographing in Mexico", Birmingham, Alabama: Space One Eleven, 1996. Includes Pinky/MM Bass; exhibition catalogue; text in English and Spanish; first edition; paperback, 24 pages, 28 cm., 0/20

"How to make a PinHole Camera" on pages 15 and 23 from The Book of Alternative Processes by James Christopher, Delmar Press, Albany, NY, 2001, Dewey, 771. ISBN, 0766820777

Bass' work is included in numerous books some of which are: "The Polaroid Book", Taschen, 2005; "Pinhole Photography", E. Renner, 1995; "Sleep: Bedtime Reading", Rizzoli/Universe Publishing, 1998; "Red Bluff Review", S. Brewer, ed., 1995.

"Coat of Many Colors," directed by Michelle Forman and Carolyn Hales, 2001 documentary for television featuring Pinky Bass as herself.^[9]
"Memento Mori: Positive/Negative" contains black and white images, Alabama Public Television