Hélène Binet, one of the world’s most successful contemporary architectural photographers is presenting key moments from her career as an artist at the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin, from 3 June to 21 September 2015. In the exhibition, which was conceived by Binet herself, the artist establishes relationships between her photographs of buildings by the well-known architects John Hejduk, Le Corbusier, Peter Zumthor and Zaha Hadid and her photographs of another building or a landscape. The resulting artistic dialogues between the works as well as the individual, mostly abstract compositions of the images underscore the distinctive atmospheric qualities of the buildings.
“Dialogues – Photographs by Hélène Binet” is the first solo exhibition in a German museum to be devoted to Binet’s work. This year in the US the photographer was presented the Excellence in Photography Award of the Julius Shulman Institute. The exhibition includes 70 medium- and large-format photos. It is accompanied by a 64-page catalogue featuring numerous photographs.
“Hélène Binet’s artistic approach of spending days occupying herself with a building on location and allowing an intensified perception to come about by means of slowness seems almost provocative in an ever faster paced world. The significance that light and shadow as well unconventional perspectives take on in her photographs permits us to recognise an affinity to the work of the Bauhaus teacher László Moholy-Nagy, who was also concerned with enabling new sensory experiences. It is a pleasure for us to be able to show Hélène Binet’s works in our museum”, explains Dr Annemarie Jaeggi, Director of the Bauhaus-Archiv.
Today, as at the beginning of her career 26 years ago, Binet still shoots her photographs on analogue film, usually in black and white. She sees both as artistic means of concentration. The compositions of her images are precise decisions selecting the optimal detail and the right moment. “Photographing is a framing of the world in order to examine particular aspects. In the process links and dialogues develop between materials, lines, light and shadow, pictorial planes, forms and structures, which become a world of their own with its own history. I wanted to further intensify this power of the links and associations inherent to the photographs through a dialogical exhibition concept”, comments Hélène Binet.
“Dialogues – Photographs by Hélène Binet” is an exhibition of the Accademia di architettura of the Università della Svizzera italiana (Mendrisio, Switzerland). At the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin it is supported by the British Council.
Publication: Dialoge – Fotografien von Hélène Binet / Dialogues – Photographs of Hélène Binet, ed. by Daniela Mondini, bilingual (Germ./Engl.), 2015, museum edition, ISBN 978-3-92261-355-8, price: 10 Euro.
Dialogue: John Hejduk / Ludwig Leo
Hélène Binet’s first professional architectural photographs present buildings by John Hejduk. These decisively influenced the way in which she looks at architecture. In the exhibition, photographs of the famous Kreuzberg tower from 1988 are linked with those of Ludwig Leo’s Umlauftank in Berlin, which Binet photographed over 26 years later. The aesthetic of the building, which develops out of the rigorous linking of form and function, is powerfully underscored in this dialogue.
Dialogue: Le Corbusier (Sainte Marie de La Tourette) / Jantar Mantar Observatory
The distinctive interaction between light and shadow in the course of the day and the year is the theme of the dialogue between Le Corbusier’s sacred architecture of Sainte Marie de La Tourette and the 18th-century Indian
astrological and astronomical observatory Jantar Mantar. Before her career as an architectural photographer, Binet worked as a theatrical photographer and, while doing so, developed a special sense for the aesthetic and psychological significance of effects of light and shadow on our experience of space.
Dialogue: Peter Zumthor / Sigurd Lewerentz
Peter Zumthor asked Hélène Binet to photograph of his buildings in 1996, when he saw her images of Sigurd Lewerentz’s St Mark’s Church in Björkhagen, Sweden. The dialogue between Sigurd Lewerentz’s and Peter Zumthor’s architecture reveals similarities with regard to the interaction of the buildings surface with its environment as well as the deliberate utilisation of light – but also differences in the choice and effect of light sources in the creation of a spatial atmosphere.
Dialogue: Zaha Hadid / natural formations of Paysages en Poésie and the Atacama Desert in Chile
Binet has been working together with Zaha Hadid since 1986, photographing her buildings in every phase of construction, including their realisation. Binet establishes an analogy between the energy of the architecture and natural formations by placing Zaha Hadid’s museum building in relationship with photos of the Paysages en Poésie and the Atacama Desert.
Hélène Binet: Biographical information
Hélène Binet was born in Sorengo (Switzerland) in 1959; she grew up in Rome and studied there at the Istituto Europeo di Design. Before she turned her attention to architectural photography, Binet worked for the theatre in Geneva. For years she has lived in London with her husband, the architect Raoul Bunschoten, and their children. In the course of her career, Binet has collaborated with many famous architects, including Zaha Hadid, John Hejduk, Daniel Libeskind, Peter Zumthor, Caruso St John, Peter Eisenman and David Chipperfield. In addition she has also photographed historical and modern architecture by architects ranging from Andrea Palladio and Nicholas Hawksmoor all the way to Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier and Sigurd Lewerentz.