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.

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.