Hélène Binet
Suzhou Garden

At the Classical Gardens of Suzhou, in the Jiangsu province of China, surface transforms into space; walls become landscapes. In her journey through this UNESCO World Heritage Site, Swiss-French photographer Hélène Binet captures the traces of environmental influences on built structures.

“While the gardens themselves are lush and extensively landscaped, Binet pauses on modest corners and walls, against which stand bare trees and lone branches. The pale backdrops are streaked with time, moss, accumulated grime, which through Binet’s lens resembles painted canvas – the elegant smudge of a Gerhard Richter or the wilting smear of a Cy Twombly. … in Hélène Binet’s work there is a sense of the theatrical or the orchestrated: she moves the lines and angels to where she wants them, waits for the main players – shadow and light – to emerge and fall into place, ready for their close-ups.” (Emily LaBarge, esse.ca).

Hélène Binet is a Swiss-French photographer, currently living in London. Her work has been published in a wide range of books, and shown and collected in numerous museums, the latest exhibition being a retrospective of her work at the Power Station of Art (PSA), Shanghai. As an advocate of analogue photography, she works exclusively with film. In 2019 she was awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for her exceptional contribution in the field of architecture, her main passion along with photography. This recognized practice has led her to focus more on the understanding and expression of the poetics of space.

 

Hélène Binet, The Walls of Suzhou Gardens. A Photographic Journey

Published by Lars Müller, 2021

With an essay by Juhani Pallasmaa

20 x 25 cm | 64 pp, 31 images

Hardback | English