Hélène Binet


Hélène Binet is a Swiss-French architectural photographer based in London, who is also one of the leading architectural photographers in the world. She is most known for her work with architects Daniel Libeskind, Peter Zumthor and Zaha Hadid, and has published books on works of several architects.

Biography

Binet was born in 1959 in Sorengo, Switzerland to Swiss and French parents. She studied photography at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Rome, where she grew up. She worked as a photographer at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, an opera house in Geneva, Switzerland, where she photographed various performances for two years, before turning to architectural photography, encouraged by architect, Daniel Libeskind, who believed, "she exposes architecture’s achievements, strength, pathos and fragility."
Binet works exclusively with photographic film.
She has worked with Raoul Bunschoten, Caruso St John, David Chipperfield, Tony Fretton, Zaha Hadid, Zvi Hecker, John Hejduk, Coop Himmelbau, Daniel Libeskind, the architect Peter Cook, Sauerbruch Hutton, Peter Zumthor, and Josef Paul Kleihues among others, besides publishing books on buildings by Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Sigurd Lewerentz, and Dimitris Pikionis.
Binet was awarded the Redaksjonell Fotografi from Visuelt, 1997, Wissenschaft fur Leben Scholarship, 2004 from the Olympus Europa Stiftung, Forum AID Award 2006, and Honorary Fellowship of Royal Institute of British Architects, 2008In 2015, she was honored with the Julius Shulman Institute Excellence in Photography Award.
Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions and the most important art and design fairs around the world.
Since 2014 and 2015, the photographs of Hélène Binet are also part of the modern and contemporary art collection of the Museum of Modern Art New York and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Personal life

Binet had a house on Osea Island in the River Blackwater Estuary in Essex. She is married to Raoul Bunschoten, and the couple live in London with their two children, Izaak and Saskia Ada.

Publications

; For architects