Lili Almog

Lili Almog (born 1961) is an Israeli photographer residing in the United States who is known for photography of the feminine body and psyche, particularly of nuns taken in cloistered and secluded space of three Carmelite monasteries in Israel and United States. She has also taken pictures of rural women in China, mostly of the Muslim community.

Lili Almog was born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1961. In the 1980s, she emigrated to the United States. She studied in the field of visual art from the School of Visual Arts and received a degree with honors, in 1992. She then pursued her career in art history and made collages related to the pictures of women over a time span. She then switched to photography of women, presenting their "psyche and their body" in their "physical space" ensconced in their "spiritual state and cultural identity" prevalent in western culture. Based on this work, on 31 July 2006, she exhibited a photographic series titled "Perfect Intimacy." This series was specifically made by her in the monasteries at the Lady of Mount Carmel Monastery, Haifa, Israel, in a monastery in Bethlehem, and in the monastery at Port Tobacco, Maryland. In documenting this photographic series, Almog, though Jewish, found access to the Christian monasteries and was able to win the confidence and friendship of the nuns, and could photograph them, documenting while in their personal pursuits such as at the time of prayer or in a contemplative or playful mood. It is religious iconography or photography of a group of women who are ordained to remain in unexceptional surroundings of the Christian monasteries, anonymous in this peculiar cloistered world. In recent years, her emphasis has shifted to "environmental portraiture" depicting social habits by engagements in the backdrop of landscape. Her photographic series include one on Chinese women, mostly of Muslim minority, that live in rural provinces. In another photographic series, her multimedia photographs reflect how the image of man evolved in art during the last 400 years.

Almog has participated in solo and group exhibitions of her photographic work, not only in many places in the United States but also in Europe, Australia and Israel. Some of the exhibitions held by her were at:

• Tel Aviv Museum of Art
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MoMA)
• Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel
• The New York City Alternative Museum
• The Griffin Museum, Massachusetts
• Ffotogallery, United Kingdom
• Museet for Fotokunst, Denmark
• Museé de la Photographie a Charleri, Belgium
• The Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York City
• Photographers' Place, UK
• Prague House of Photography, Czech Republic
• Stills Gallery, Australia

• Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture. Metatronics, Incorporated. 2005. 

Apart from many private collections, some of the museums where Almog's photographic collections are housed are:

• SF MoMA
• Victoria and Albert Museum
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
• New York Academy of Art
• Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New York
• Norton Museum, Florida
• Musee de la Photographie, Belgium
• Museet for Fotokunst, Denmark
• Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art

Almog has published books and monographs. One is titled Perfect Intimacy which was published by Powerhouse Press in 2006. The second monograph is titled The Other Half of the Sky (2009). Another monograph is called Between Presence and Absence (2015).