{"id":7040,"date":"2015-12-22T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/architizer.wpengine.com\/helene-binet-photography\/"},"modified":"2022-05-31T09:48:54","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T13:48:54","slug":"helene-binet-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/architizer.com\/blog\/inspiration\/industry\/helene-binet-photography\/","title":{"rendered":"Photography That Reduces Le Corbusier, Zaha Hadid, and Peter Zumthor to “Fragments of Light”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cArchitecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light,\u201d Le Corbusier wrote in his 1923 manifesto Towards a New Architecture<\/i>. The same can be said of the architectural photography of H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Binet, the 2015 recipient of the Julius Shulman Photography Award<\/a>. Over the past 25 years, Binet has worked closely with the highest profile architects \u2014 Zaha Hadid<\/a>, Daniel Libeskind<\/a>, and Peter Zumthor<\/a>, to name a few \u2014 photographing their work, as well as historic works by the likes of Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, and Sverre Fehn.<\/p>\n

Eschewing the distractions of color, the Franco-Swiss photographer\u2019s stark black-and-white imagery focuses entirely on the interplay that architects stage between structure (Le Corbusier\u2019s \u201cmasses\u201d) and light, highlighting the entrypoints through which the sun can penetrate an interior and travel within a space, as well as light\u2019s selectivity in illuminating certain surfaces while neglecting others.<\/p>\n

\n\t\n\t\n<\/div>\n\n

\u201cKapelle fur den heiligen Bruder Klaus 03,\u201d 2009, a photograph of Peter Zumthor\u2019s Bruder Klaus Field Chapel outside of Cologne<\/i><\/p>\n

\n\t\n\t\n<\/div>\n\n

\u201cKolumba 01,\u201d 2007, a photograph of Peter Zumthor\u2019s Kolumba Museum in Cologne. The punctured fa\u00e7ade creates a mosaic of light on the interior walls that also stretches lines of light across the ceiling.<\/i><\/p>\n

In Zumthor\u2019s Bruder Klaus Field Chapel<\/a>, light descends from a raindrop-shaped oculus and illuminates the intricate texture of the charred, undulating ceiling, a remnant of the spruce-tree framework that once held the concrete in place before it was burned away.<\/p>\n

A tight crop of Hadid\u2019s Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art<\/a> in Cincinnati shows how light carves the surfaces of the building into separate planes, exaggerating their outlines by building a contrast between the high-exposure, sunlit surfaces and shadowy black recesses in between. In Rome, Hadid\u2019s MAXXI Museum<\/a>, lit artificially from below, is portrayed as a series of bright, fluid geometric protrusions against the black void of a starless night sky.<\/p>\n

\n\t\n\t\n<\/div>\n\n

\u201cRosenthal Center for Contemporary Art,\u201d 2003, a museum by Zaha Hadid<\/i><\/p>\n

\n\t\n\t\n<\/div>\n\n

\u201cMAXXI Diptychon,\u201d 2009, a photograph of Zaha Hadid\u2019s MAXXI Museum in Rome<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a clich\u00e9, but in photography, we make drawings about light,\u201d Binet told Architizer. \u201cBefore shooting, I make notes about where the light is at what time. I often compare myself to a musician; to play a score you need to know the music. I know the atmosphere, its relationship to the materials, the relationship to the landscape, the relationship to space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Binet\u2019s relationships with her clients, often the architects themselves, also serve to bolster her understanding of their buildings. \u201cI\u2019ve worked with Zaha for almost 25 years, and we\u2019ve gotten to know each other,\u201d said Binet. \u201cEach relationship is different, but I don\u2019t get specifications. It\u2019s something else, like an osmosis. You\u2019re inspired by their personalities, or their commentary on completely different things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\n\t\n<\/div>\n\n

\u201cFirminy C,\u201d 2007, a photograph of Le Corbusier\u2019s Saint-Pierre church in Firminy-Vert, France<\/i><\/p>\n

Binet’s images also include works by architects Binet was never able to meet, including Le Corbusier himself. Her shots of his posthumously built, 2006 concrete Saint-Pierre church at Firminy-Vert in France captured the waves of light that reflect off of the floor and trace luminous ripples along the three walls facing the altar, a surprise product of the grooved polycarbonate cylinders mounted onto the walls that occurs daily until about noon.<\/p>\n

Fellow photographer Henry Plummer\u2019s 2013 book Cosmos of Light: The Sacred Architecture of Le Corbusier<\/a><\/i> points out that<\/a> Le Corbusier could not have predicted this effect, but took a great joy in such accidents of construction. Binet takes a similar approach to photography.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also about reacting to something that happens very quickly,\u201d she said. \u201cI make plans, but you can be surprised by the building and forget about the plans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Images via ammann \/\/ gallery<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cArchitecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light,\u201d Le Corbusier wrote in his 1923 manifesto Towards a New Architecture. The same can be said of the architectural photography of H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Binet, the 2015 recipient of the Julius Shulman Photography Award. Over the past 25 years, Binet has worked closely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"architizer_featured_type":"projects","architizer_featured_image":"1421002","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[],"architizer_project":[],"architizer_brand":[],"architizer_firm":[],"architizer_product":[],"class_list":["post-7040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry","category-inspiration"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPhotography That Reduces Le Corbusier, Zaha Hadid, and Peter Zumthor to "Fragments of Light" - Architizer Journal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/architizer.com\/blog\/inspiration\/industry\/helene-binet-photography\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Photography That Reduces Le Corbusier, Zaha Hadid, and Peter Zumthor to "Fragments of Light" - Architizer Journal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cArchitecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light,\u201d Le Corbusier wrote in his 1923 manifesto Towards a New Architecture. 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