Lili Almog is an Israeli photographer whose work has been exhibited in solo and group shows and has been reproduced in New York Fotograf, The Miami Herald, The Boston Globe, Vogue Australia and several books. For two years, Almog visited nuns in three Carmelite monasteries — one in Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel, where the order was founded in the year 1200; the first Carmelite monastery in the United States in Port Tobacco, Maryland; and one located in Bethlehem, Palestine. These women have dedicated their lives to God, devotion, and service of others.
British writer and art historian Dr. Mark Gisbourne provides an introduction to this fascinating visual overview of the cloistered life. He notes: "The sisters, as revealed in Almog's photographs, give off the air of being joyful human beings. There is little in her photographs to suggest an austere or taciturn engagement with life. It is their extraordinary ability to appear as if they live a life outside time, or, at least, the frenetic sense of time that most of us experience in the contemporary world."
This engrossing collection of 72 four-color photographs captures and conveys the rhythms of monastic life and puts on full display the simplicity of these women's ordered existence and the richness of their devotional life. Some of our favorite photographs show a nun standing with outstretched arms on a parapet at the seashore; a sister ringing the Angelus; a cross hanging directly over a clock; a nun in prayer in her spartan room; a sister in meditation on a beautiful red rug; and a nun with a playful dog.
