I have been looking forward to the exhibition of architectural photographs of Hélène Binet, one of the very best of architectural photographers: very austere, good on form, light and texture, the architectural equivalent of Peter Zumthor, also Swiss, although living in London. I had never seen images of Sverre Fehn’s Hedmark Museum in Norway which suits her aesthetic perfectly – a mixture of concrete bridges, stone walls and rough cobbles, all very deeply textural. She photographs Christ Church, Spitalfields from a distance and brings out its tonal and sculptural characteristics perfectly. I particularly admired her wonderful photographs of the concrete undercarriage of Sergio Musmeci’s Ponte sul Basento in Potenza in southern Italy. There are almost no people. In fact, it’s faintly shocking when there are. Instead, her photographs are records of the purest abstracted form.
It’s a wonderful exhibition and we too enjoyed the Potenza bridge but really loved the Acropolis walkways using “found” stone from the rebuilding of Athens. We preferred the Binet to the Late Constable as were hoping for more of his turbulent skies like the astonishingly powerful “Rainstorm over the Sea”.