Photographer Janet Bayly uses the camera as a tool to create personal metaphors for a personal reality, rather than a literal mirror held up to 'reality' in her work.
Bayly often works in series, repeating an image almost exactly, but from a slightly different perspective or moment in time. Yellow Tulips 1 was originally taken with a Polaroid camera and film, which produces dream-like, shadowy images. This work was re-photographed and printed on metallic paper 17 years later, in 2002.

Bayly was one of many Aotearoa New Zealand women artists who experimented with photography and film in the 1970s and 80s, at the brink of its recognition as an art form. Her work was included in Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University’s 2015 survey show Fragments of a World: Artists Working with Film and Photography 1973 – 1987, re-focussing on this little-known aspect of national art history.

Janet Bayly (born 1955, Tauranga) achieved her Master’s Degree from Elam School of Fine Art, Auckland University in 1979. Exhibiting nationally since, Bayly’s work is held in public and private collections including Te Papa Tongarewa and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Bayly has been the director of Mahara Gallery, Kapiti Coast since 2006.