Pinky Bass
Pinky Bass (b. 1936) was born in Pennsylvania and spent her early years in Fairhope, Alabama, returning most summers after moving to Knoxville, TN. In 1986 she returned to settle in Fairhope. The artistic roots run deep in her family, including her grandmother’s work in photography, her mother’s watercolor painting and joint musical involvement with her sister. She earned a degree in Bible Studies from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA while also maintaining an interest in the arts.
In her 50s, she divorced and found time and space to create. She received an MFA from Georgia State University, devoting her artistic talents to photography. While in graduate school, she discovered pinhole cameras. The ability to make almost anything into a camera and less control over the outcome stimulated her artistic vision and became the basis for much of her work. She travelled throughout the south with a walk-in camera obscura, Pinky’s Portable Pop-up Pinhole Camera and Darkroom, working as an artist educator for the Alabama State Council on the Arts. During her sister’s battle with cancer, she became interested in what was going on inside the human body and began stitching anatomical images onto photographs, further expanding her work with multimedia.
Her accolades and awards are extensive and include the Mobile Arts Council’s Lifetime Achievement award, a Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and in 2024 the Impact Award from the Alabama State Arts Council. Her work has been featured in publications, in group and solo exhibitions and collected by museums and other institutions.