Emma Bass
About the Create! Magazine 10th Anniversary Book: Create! Magazine is honored to celebrate a decade of contemporary art by publishing a look back at previously selected artists: their achievements, career growth, and more since being published. Stay tuned for the book launch in fall 2026, and join our newsletter to stay up to date.
Emma Bass, featured in both Create! Magazine and the Create! Magazine 10th Anniversary Book, is a fine art photographer based in Auckland, New Zealand, whose path to the camera began not in a studio but on a hospital ward. After a career in nursing and more than two decades as a commercial photographer, Bass arrived at fine art practice fourteen years ago, bringing an unusually direct understanding of spaces where people are vulnerable, healing, or in need of beauty.
Her work centres on floral photography—flowers rendered with an intensity that is at once botanical and emotional. Bass is drawn to the intersection of aesthetics and wellbeing, influenced by the Dutch Golden Age still-life tradition and the colour psychology of clinical environments, both of which suggest that beauty is never merely decorative. Her images are made to be lived with, lending themselves naturally to collaborations with organisations and makers whose values align.
Bass’s work is held in collections internationally and has been exhibited across New Zealand and Sydney. She has exhibited twice at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in London, and her photographs are installed in hospitals, hospices, and clinical environments where art is understood as part of patient wellbeing.
Her collaborative projects include partnerships with NZ premium winery Trinity Hill across three vintages of the Emma Rosé, Italian luxury clothing brand Laboratorio Capri, and a series of sumptuous wool and silk scarves created to support Breast Cancer Cure NZ. Bass is currently expanding into painting, exploring new possibilities for mark-making and expression beyond the lens.
https://emmabass.co.nz
