Hélène Binet at Geoffrey Bawa Trust in Sri Lanka

Geoffrey Bawa, Lunuganga Estate, Bentota, Sri Lanka, 2002

Hélène Binet (b. 1959) is a Swiss and French internationally acclaimed photographer based in London. She studied photography at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Rome, the city in which she spent most of her formative years. Over a period of more than 35 years, Binet has captured both contemporary and historic architecture. She is a fervent advocate of analogue photography, working exclusively with film. Binet’s work has been widely published and exhibited in both national and international exhibitions, including a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2021 and a solo exhibition at the Power Station of Art, Shanghai, in 2019. She was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2007 and in 2015 was the recipient of the Julius Shulman Institute Excellence in Photography Award. She was also the recipient of the 2019 Ada Louise Huxtable Prize, awarded to a woman who has made a major contribution to architecture, and is one of the Royal Photographic Society’s Hundred Heroines.

Through her upcoming research trip with Geoffrey Bawa Trust in Sri Lanka, Hélène will be revisiting the Lunuganga gardens after 21 years. “I would like,” says Hélène, “with my camera, to explore in depth a notion described by Bachelard in La poétique de l’espace: how a space can make you feel very much anchored and at the same time make you feel connected to vast dimensions.”

Follow Hélène Binet on Instagram @binet.helene