Artist: Helene Binet
Title: Lingering A (Suzhou Gardens)
Year: 2018
Dimension: 120 x 153 cm
Technique: digital c-type print
Price: TBC
About the Artist
“Hélène Binet is a Swiss-French architectural photographer based in London, born in 1959. Working exclusively in film, Binet has been practicing in both contemporary and historical architectural photography for over twenty-five years.
Photographing and documenting architectural sites from construction through to completion, her work exhibits a sense of imposing strength balanced by quietude through her use of black and white film stock as well as her sensitive and exacting eye for framing and details. Recreated in her photographs is a sense of space and depth beyond the surficial. Binet captures the fortitude of the human spirit within the stillness of time, light, objects, and construction.
Binet’s numerous list of clients have included architects including Zaha Hadid. She has also photographed the works of past architects such as Alvar Aalto, Geoffrey Bawa, Le Corbusier, Sverre Fehn, John Hejduk, Sigurd Lewerentz, Andrea Palladio and Dimitris Pikionis.
Binet is the winner of the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize and has had numerous group and solo exhibitions both in the UK and internationally including: Zaha Hadid Gallery, Somerset House, the Copper Union, 13th International Architecture Biennale di Venezia.
Her work has been acquired for the collections of MOMA New York and the Carnegie Museum of Art among many others.”
Paragraphs taken from the site https://www.joannabird.com/artist/helene-binet/
What does this work say (to me)?
Since I started being involved with art, I always heard gallerists, dealers, critics, and even photographers talk about the “eye” of the photographer, without that eye he or she would not be able to register anything that is worth or meaningful.
The more I heard about it, it became clear to me that “the eye” was a gift the photographer had, with it he/she was able to take the photo of a person, scene or that of an object where one could recognize the presence of three distinctive energies all blended in one: Beauty (captured by the eye), its meaning and transcendence (recognized or projected by the soul) and the technical knowledge to click at the right time (the intellect knowing all elements like light, composition, contrast were in place: the rational side).
Recently watching a documentary about the American photographer, he was one of the first photographers of the XX century that showed us how touching beauty can be. The soul of beauty one might say.
Looking at this impeccably and touching photograph by Helen Binet one is surprised by how surreal reality can be. She explained to me that she was leaving from the garden where this tree and wall were and then she saw “it”, she felt the need to stop and to record with her camera what her eyes/brain and soul were perceiving and made the camera record it.
There is no digital intervention, it is what she saw.
And what I see is the pass of time, the patient and merciless passing of time and that of its permanent companion: nature.
The footprint of decay and rebirth, the perfect harmony of what is gone, what is coming, and what is permanent, all in one.
And in that sense the title of this photograph is perfect. On it everything seems to linger… one feels the reluctancy of decay, life, death, rebirth, ugliness, and beauty to let it go… all of them coexist in mutual agreement as if an intangible force is keeping all of them together despite their contradictions and it is precisely that, that makes this photo so beautiful.
It is showing us the force of life.
Note: I apologize as I photographed the original photo, so it is not as sharp and telling as it should be.
In what Room to place it?
It can be in any room really, of course, I would suggest a room where you can join the symphony of time and allow yourself to hear it and see it…with time.
Displaying it
It is a good size photograph and due to the richness of textures in it I would suggest placing it against a neatly finished white wall or very soft colour, so nothing interferes with what you have to see.
Light is really important too; I would suggest investing on a projector that diffuses the light instead of directing it otherwise the imagine will have some “jumps” and that peaceful evenness so vital on the image will be lost.
