The dialogues of Hélène Binet

From June 3 - September 21, 2015 Bauhaus-Archiv, Muzeum für Gestaltung in Berlin is exhibiting "Dialogues": a selection of "key moments" from the over 25-year career of photographer Hélène Binet, who has used her camera to capture modern and contemporary architectural works by famous architects such as: John Hejduk, Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Leo, Ludwig Leo, Sverre Fehn, Geoffrey Bawa, Dimitris Pikionis, Sigurd Lewerentz, Peter Zumthor, Zaha Hadid, David Chipperfield, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, Caruso St. John etc...

Juhani Pallasma writes that "Hélène Binet asks interesting questions about the relationship between subject and artistic intention, entity and detail, space and atmosphere, materiality and light. Buildings become landscapes, while landscapes become intimate tactile surfaces, as if they were the aged skin of a living creature. Even the air tends to take on the characteristics of solid matter, the sky is no longer a void, projecting a sense of weight and opacity. Her photographs emphasize materiality, as if they were meant to be experienced through the skin rather than with the eyes".

Hélène Binet does not limit herself to the pure reproduction of buildings, she has chosen to photograph structures and materials, shapes and geometries, creating connections and dialogues "between the lines", between lights, voids, backgrounds. She often uses architecture to express her own thoughts and likes to play with the idea of the architect, her relevant eye studying architectural landscapes with great curiosity. Often from her photographs we fully understand a building, without the image being an absolute statement of it, as she is not interested in showing large structures in a landscape, but prefers to magnify or hide parts of a space to reveal new qualities in others.

Her predominantly black and white photographs, always on film, are particularly characterized by the precise effects of the interplay between light and shadow in architectural space. In fact, shadow, which creates often unnoticed angles and emphasizes rigor and unusual nature, is a major theme in her art.

In the 70 photographs exhibited in her first solo show in a German museum, Hélène Binet has chosen to juxtapose different buildings designed by famous architects against landscape photographs, a dialogue that emphasizes the specificity of architecture and opens up a bewitching simultaneity of possibilities.