Pinky Bass

Marion Winchester McCall "Pinky" Bass, also known as Pinky /MM Bass or Pinky M. M. Bass' (born January 20, 1936 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is a photographer, known for her work in pinhole photography. She is a resident of Fairhope in Baldwin County. She has been a featured artist at Space One Eleven and Agnes galleries in Birmingham, and has been shown at the Birmingham Museum of Art as well as at art museums in Houston, Montgomery and Philadelphia. Her work has been published in Aperture and Pinhole Journal.

Bass is known for her inventive self-built pinhole cameras, The first of these, made in 1989, was a giant pinhole built out of a pop-up travel camper, "Pinky's Portable Pop-up Pinhole Camera and Darkroom".

She has won grants for her work from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 1991, and from the State of North Carolina in 1992 and 1993. She appears in the 2001 television documentary Coat of Many Colors, and her work was used in the Alabama Public Television special, Memento Mori: Positive/Negative.

Bass' installation "Body Notes", which employs petit componia (music box mechanisms) to produce sounds based on a pattern of punched holes tracing the contours of photographic images, was featured at the 2008 Magic City Art Connection festival at Linn Park.

Exhibitions

• “Voices Rising: Alabama Women at the Millennium.”
  • National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC (June - September 2000)
  • Birmingham Museum of Art (January - April 2001)
  • Huntsville Museum of Art (May - August 2001)
  • Montgomery Museum of Art (September - October 2001)
  • Wiregrass Museum, Dothan (January - April 2002)
  • Center for Cultural Arts, Gadsden (May - August 2002)
  • Mobile Museum of Art (August - October 2002)
• "Pure Light: Southern Pinhole Photography"
  • Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (January - April 2003)
• "The Lensless View: Contemporary Pinhole Photography" Upstairs Gallery. Tryon, North Carolina (April - May 2005)
• "Body Works". University of Montevallo. Bloch Hall Gallery (2006)
• "Id: An Exhibition of Self Portraiture." The Light Factory. Charlotte, North Carolina (August - October 2006)
• "Cuerpos Santos" S P A C E Inaugural Book Arts exhibition, SDCA (Seaport District Cultural Association) New York City July-Sept 2007.
• "Body Notes", Magic City Art Connection. Birmingham. (April 25-27, 2008)

References

• "Pinky Bass" (August 27, 2023) Wikipedia - accessed September 27, 2023
• "The Enchanted Mishap". Pinhole Journal. Vol. 19, No. 1
• Space One Eleven (1996) Tangle of Complexes: Photographing in Mexico. Space One Eleven.
• Donelson, Cathy (n. d.) Fairhope: Images of America. Arcadia Press.
• Forman, Michele and Carolyn Hales, directors (2001) Coat of Many Colors.
• Alabama Public Television (n. d. ) "Momento Mori: Positive/Negative"
• James, Christopher (2002) The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes. Florence, Kentucky: Thomson Delmar Learning. ISBN 0766820777
• Space One Eleven. (1996) Tangle of Complexes: Photographing in Mexico. Space One Eleven.
• Huebner, Michael (April 25, 2008) "Art that makes music" The Birmingham News

External links

• Pinky /MM Bass website
• Pinky Bass interview on "Tapestry"