Over 20 striking images by the leading photographer Hélène Binet, inspired by the book Jewish Country Houses (edited by Juliet Carey and Abigail Green), are being exhibited in selected venues in the UK and Europe in 2024-2026.
Binet’s photographic essay focuses on nine houses, one mausoleum, and a synagogue, capturing their extraordinary exteriors, gardens, and interiors. Her photography offers a fresh perspective, blending architectural vision with lived reality. She offers an alternative to familiar, celebratory conventions of country-house photography, helping to establish these places as sites of Jewish memory.
In her own words, these works explore “the meeting point between the early dream for the house, and the literal vision of that house shaped by inhabiting it…Through photography, I worked to combine these two visions and to communicate this to an audience.”
Discovering Jewish Country Houses: Photographs by Hélène Binet was exhibited at Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham from September 2024 to January 2025. It will then move to Waddesdon Manor 26 March to 22 June 2025 before its European venues: the Liebermann Villa am Wannsee from 20 September 2025 to 19 January 2026 before moving to Brno, Czechia.
