About Jeni

Since 1999 Jeni Bassett has rapidly established a reputation as one of New Zealand's most respected and creative equestrian photographers.

Jeni has had a lifetime associated with horses - from childhood days at 'Burnt Hill', a Canterbury sheep station near Oxford, where riding, pony breeding and showing were an integral part of family life, through to now owning, riding and breeding an occasional thoroughbred.

A biologist by early profession, she spent two decades working in Antarctica on land-based, or shipboard contracts ranging from scientific studies to private expeditions. During this time, although as yet untrained as a photographer, she nonetheless developed skills and the intuitive ability to use a camera as a scientific tool and as an art form.

Returning to New Zealand in the mid-eighties, Jeni managed one of the country's foremost photographic libraries, gaining invaluable experience in marketing natural history, polar and adventure images to international publications and designers.

In 1995 Jeni embarked on freelance career to devote more time to her own photography. This initially led to a return to Polar regions, working as a naturalist guide and lecturer in seaborne tourism, principally from South America. In 1999, she participated in an extensive UNESCO World Heritage Site project in Australasia, Southeast Asia and the West Pacific. Her most recent adventure was to complete an environmental photographic assignment in Micronesia for the South Pacific Regional and Environmental Programme, aimed at fostering local community conservation management.

Since then the challenge of establishing Equine Attitude as a source of unique equestrian images has occupied Jeni’s time exclusively. The concept grew from a passion for horses; an interest in the tangle of human emotion and spirit of thoroughbred racing; and the will to capture on film frequently unnoticed interactions between horses and the humans whose livelihood, or simply pleasure, revolves around them.

The power of an image will always reflect knowledge of the subject and/or empathy with it.

Recognising opportunity, utilising natural lighting and a spontaneous, almost innate, sense of what is about to happen, or simply patience and time to allow an intimacy to develop are all integral components in creating a special picture.

Photography, in recording the uniqueness of a moment, has a wonderful ability to arouse an emotional response – to instill pleasure and love, or evoke pity, fear or horror; occasionally images may even create change. Essentially, Jeni maintains, as other photographers doubtless also do, that truly great photographs are ‘given’ rather than taken. Captured on film, such images have the unique ability to allow others to be affected and share the world through the eyes of another and to serve as a reminder of how little we ever really 'see'.