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Discovering Jewish Country Houses: Photographs by Hélène Binet
21 September 2024 – 8 January 2025
This autumn, delve into the evocative photography of Hélène Binet at Strawberry Hill House. Recognized as one of the world’s leading photographers, Binet unveils a captivating collection showcasing the distinctive essence of Jewish country houses. Swiss and French by heritage, Binet studied in Rome and now resides in London. As a fervent advocate of analogue photography, she works exclusively with film, believing that “the soul of photography is its relationship with the instant.”
Experience over 20 striking works inspired by the book The Jewish Country Houses (edited by Juliet Carey and Abigail Green), illuminating the rich history of houses owned, built, or renovated by Jews between the second half of the 19th and the early 20th century. Binet’s photographic essays focus on nine houses, one mausoleum, and a synagogue, capturing their extraordinary exteriors, gardens, and interiors.
The featured properties exhibit a remarkable stylistic range, from the playful historicism of Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire and the gothic splendor of Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham to the ancient Greek-inspired Villa Kérylos on the Côte d’Azur and the modernist Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic. Some are celebrated tourist destinations, while others remain hidden treasures.
Binet’s 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.”
Curator Juliet Carey of Waddesdon Manor praises Binet’s ability to recapture a distant world, revealing the identity and material essence of each place. Strawberry Hill Curator Silvia Davoli adds that Binet’s refined gaze transports viewers back to when these houses were vibrant homes filled with life and memory.
This exhibition was made possible with support from the Martin J. Gross Family Foundation, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, Brasenose College, The Montefiore Endowment, the Rothschild Foundation, and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.
Tickets are included in general admission from 21 September 2024 to 8 January 2025.
Advance booking is recommended to ensure you don’t miss this extraordinary exhibition.
This exhibition is complemented by our online exhibition “The Unexpected Jewish past of Strawberry Hill House”, which delves into the lives of Frances, Countess Waldegrave, and Herbert Stern, both significant Jewish figures in Strawberry Hill’s history. Together, these exhibitions offer a deeper exploration of Jewish cultural heritage, both through the lens of historical figures and the evocative photography of Hélène Binet.
Strawberry Hill House, 04-2021, hand printed b/w silver gelatin
Strawberry Hill House, 04-11, hand printed b/w silver gelatin
Strawberry Hill House, 04-11, digital c-print
Discovering Jewish Country Houses: A Tour of Strawberry Hill House
Sunday 6th or Sunday 13th October, 10am-11:30am
Our tour will look at Horace Walpole’s gothic revival masterpiece now restored to its 18th century splendour, but it will also examine some of its later stories. In the 19th century Lady Waldegrave, the daughter of a famous Jewish opera singer, created herself as a political hostess and developed and expanded Strawberry Hill. The subsequent owners were the de Sterns, part of a European Jewish banking dynasty. Herbert Stern was ennobled as Lord Michelham and, together with his ambitious wife, continued the social and political tradition laying on lavish entertainments and using the House to showcase their art collections.
Standard Adult Ticket: £17
Students: £8.50
We need your support to keep the house open for generations to come. Become a member or donate to our fundraising initiatives today.
Strawberry Hill House is internationally famous as Britain’s finest example of Georgian Gothic Revival architecture.
