Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pinky Bass

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Weak Keep. Cbrown1023 talk 14:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pinky Bass

Pinky Bass (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

not notable Tom 03:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

• This AfD nomination was incomplete. It is listed now. DumbBOT 15:07, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

• Weak Keep - article asserts that this artist has displayed works at a number of major exhibitions. External links may constitute multiple non-trivial external coverage per WP:BIO, although ideally more sources are needed. Nominator's rationale is too vague and should have been explained better (i.e. with specific references to the article and/or to specific WP policies). Walton monarchist89 17:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - I read some back and forth on this topic between user:hoary and user:artsojourner last month. I tried to find references and sources for this artist but was unable to find much substance. I am not a big proponent of deleting anythng from Wikipedia but after doing some due diligence on this one, believe it merits deletion. If someone can change the article to show Ms. Bass' notability I'm all for keeping the article (edited signature as I didn't realize that I wasn't logged on) --Tom 00:48, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Bass was covered in a documentary produced by the Alabama State Council on the Arts, called Coat of Many Colors.[1] Her work was one of the features in a magazine called Pinhole Journal Vol 19 #1. The Enchanted Mishap.[2] Carolyn DeMeritt produced a 1993 "video production on the artistic collaboration of Kitty Couch and Pinky Bass".[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] and they still have a page for her on their website.[6] She had her own exclusive exhibition called BodyWorks at the University of Montevallo Bloch Hall Gallery in Spring 2006.[7] I'd say all this is enough to demonstrate notability. — coelacan talk — 05:49, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Sorry, but this sounds thin to me. For Voices Rising, she's one of twelve people. The text in the page about her runs to just three sentences. Et cetera. -- Hoary 15:56, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
• KEEP Before the article was 'torn apart by some editors and actually had parts deleted altogether instead of trying to find info it is easier just to delete it for some unscrupulous editors on here. it was much more informative before all the mess. Bass is a notable person especially in Pinhole camera work. Artsojourner 10:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
• One would have to be delusional not to note Bass vast accomplishments. I never understood why someone deleted the (id) exhibition that included only a few artists among them Robert Maplethorpe unless it was just as a slight. For Bass to even begin to deconstruct and sew and utilize photography in such a manner and then to be applauded for it is a very high honor indeed. With work in Ashville Art Museum, Birmingham Museum of Art, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Montgomery Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art plus a couple of films with her work what else would a person need for an article on here. Artsojourner 11:37, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Hey, don't over-sauce the dinner: One would have to be delusional not to note Bass vast accomplishments... Whatever Bass has done, "vast accomplishments" is putting it way too strongly for your own case. Furthermore, leave out the dangling slur, unscrupulous editors. I don't much care one way or the other whether Pinky remains a Wikipedia article, but your tone has put me off enough that I would like to vote delete, especially as the article is quite wretched at the moment. Still, I'm willing to be convinced that there is some merit in a short sketch of Bass's career, assuming the quotations don't continue to outweigh the other sections in the article. Pinkville 01:46, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: With work in Ashville Art Museum, Birmingham Museum of Art, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Montgomery Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art plus a couple of films with her work what else would a person need for an article on here. Since you ask... She has had one solo exhibition. Has it verifiably generated critical comment? Has there been a single book of her work? Despite working in a populous, affluent English-speaking nation and thus having a great advantage in the (admittedly often absurd or repellent) struggle for recognition, Bass doesn't appear in the long index of the capacious Oxford Companion to the Photograph. (She's also not mentioned in any other photography book in which I looked her up.) She may indeed be very significant: I'm open to persuasion. So far, I'm underwhelmed. -- Hoary 03:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Coelacan. Mangojuice^talk 18:37, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
• Still wondering. Notability (people) tells us that notable photographers are those who "received multiple independent reviews of or awards for their work". I don't see multiple independent reviews, and I see no awards other than those of two grants: no award of a kind that is, or might reasonably be, included in Category:Photography awards or similar. This guideline continues: "This is not intended to be an exclusionary list; just because someone doesn't fall into one of these categories doesn't mean an article on the person should automatically be deleted." I wholeheartedly agree with this: without it, Pierre Rossier and many other articles would be wrongly deleted. However, Rossier (like many others) has obvious alternative notability, and I have trouble seeing this in Bass. She's mentioned in some books, occasional photos by her appear in some books, she teaches. The only possible plus is that her work has, we are told, been exhibited (by itself? within group shows?) in some prestigious places. However, there seems to be no evidence provided for most of these exhibitions. She verifiably (link) had a solo exhibition at a university. Fine, but the university I went to had/has a little exhibition space that (perhaps unjustly) was/is largely ignored by the outside world and indeed by the huge majority of the university's own staff and students: I wouldn't take an exhibition there as proof of notability and until I see external reviews of the Montevallo show I wonder about that too. -- Hoary 09:50, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Bass is also listed in the Women in Photography, International Archive now housed at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. also for those who would like to know more before weighing in on Bass work please read the article after I have updated numerous sources. It is important to realize that photographers, as a general rule, are exhibited in more group shows more than say painters or printmakers. Please consider the achievements of Bass when casting a vote. How many other photographers on WP have far fewer achievements and still have posted articles? Artsojourner 16:44, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

• Delete This article is really poor. The alleged notability of Bass is all very thin and the primary author only makes it worse by repeatedly trying to puff up her qualifications. For example, the honor of being named a "Georgia Women in the Visual Arts" is a title that the Ga. legislature bestowed on at least 150 other women that year. Its great that she made the list, but we can't hardly have articles on each of those people, so it doesn't make her notable. The same holds true of these exhibits that she has been included in -- she was one of many artists so included. A second example is the Women in Photography, International Archive listing (which we are thoughtfully told is "now housed at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University"). Bass has a one line reference to a 24 page catalog of an exhibit. Imogen Cunningham has 13 listings, many of which are major books about her. This article is so full of this puffed up information that on more than one occasion I tried to edit it down to its provable, notable points to see what we have. I was harshly accused of "hacking up" the article, but my point then and now is that including a phone book's worth of information tells the reader nothing. These laundry list articles merely leads a discriminating reader to wonder why all this unnecessary information is listed. Have a look at a truly notable photographer's article -- Cartier-Bresson or Edward Weston -- and you will not find a listing for every group exhibit in which the photographer was included. Now look at this article's reference or external link list -- most of these references contain a single line for Bass out of a much larger publication. And now Artsojourner makes his last chance argument that many other photographers listed on Wiki are less notable -- please list these articles and we can start an AfD process on them. No, this article does not demonstrate Bass's notability and should be deleted. TheMindsEye 04:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. TheMindsEye is in places undeservedly harsh, I think: most photographers who rightly get an article in WP aren't as notable/celebrated as Cartier-Bresson or (grandpa) Weston. (Only half a dozen or so could be.) Better to compare Bass with less celebrated but yet deservedly respected north American photographers as different from each other as, say, Robert Polidori or Bill Owens (neither of whom has half as good an article as he deserves, incidentally). It's here that we see how weak Bass's claim to notability is. And I fear that TheMindsEye is right: the article on Bass has recently suffered from an infusion of ho-hum material. -- Hoary 06:34, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
• Weighing in Seeing that I pulled this article together, how many Southern Women photographers are as notable as Bass? Maybe just a handfull. Editors please make your decision based on the relative facts as anything else here is not useful. When I was asked for more information to try to win over support for this article I felt compelled to find what I could find not necessarily weighing it against what is already there nor did I try to puff it up. I stated what I thought to be correct information to the best of my knowledge and I have never vandalized an article by including misrepresentation or by deleting whole areas from someone elses articles for any reason. Artsojourner 08:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • That's a tough one: being neither in nor from north America, I tend to confuse Canadians and Youessians, let alone northerners and southerners within the US. (I'm also not well up on very recent US photography, as a lot of what I've glanced at is "me" and "my friends" stuff that doesn't interest me.) Sally Mann? Eudora Welty? -- Hoary 10:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.