Discovering Jewish Country Houses: Photographs by Hélène Binet
Wed – Sun, 26 Mar – 22 Jun
11am – 4pm
HouseOur exhibition for 2025 showcases a new body of work by one of the world’s leading photographers, Hélène Binet, capturing an extraordinary group of Jewish country houses.
The display of more than 20 works takes as its inspiration the new book Jewish Country Houses (edited by Juliet Carey and Abigail Green, Profile Books, 2024), which sheds new light on a previously overlooked category of country houses owned, renovated, and at times built by Jews and individuals of Jewish descent. Find out more about the Jewish Country Houses project here.
Binet was commissioned to create photographic essays about nine houses, two mausoleums and a synagogue explored to capture their extraordinary and varied exteriors, gardens and interiors.
These photographs explore the meeting point between the early dream for the house, and the literal vision of that house shaped by inhabiting.
Hélène Binet
Country houses are powerful symbols of national identity, evoking the glamorous world of the landowning aristocracy. Jewish country houses tell a more complex story of prejudice and integration, difference and connection. Many had spectacular art collections and gardens. Some were stages for lavish entertaining, while others provided inspiration to the European avant garde. A few are now museums of international importance; many more are hidden treasures: all were beloved homes that bear witness to the remarkable achievements of newly emancipated Jews across Europe – and to a dream of belonging that mostly came to a brutal end with the Holocaust.
Hélène Binet
Hélène Binet (b.1959) is a Swiss and French photographer, who studied in Rome, is based in London and is internationally acclaimed for her photographs of both historic and contemporary architecture. She is a fervent advocate of analogue photography, working exclusively with film and believes that ‘the soul of photography is its relationship with the instant.’ In the words of Daniel Liebeskind, ‘every time Hélène Binet takes a photograph, she exposes architecture’s achievements, strength, pathos and fragility.’ www.helenebinet.com/info
Jewish Country Houses
A unique angle on Jewish and country house history, beautifully illustrated with original photography by leading architectural photographer Hélène Binet.
Through a series of striking case studies this revelatory book explores the world of Jewish country houses, their architecture and collections – and the lives of the extraordinary men and women who created, transformed and shaped them.
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History of the house
Baron Ferdinand wanted an estate to entertain family and friends.
Highlights of the house
Where else in England can you find a French Renaissance château, built in the 19th century, and filled with royal treasures?
Explore the Gardens
Waddesdon’s gardens were the vision of Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, who created the Manor at the end of the 19th century.