Lili Almog,
Outdoor portrait #6
Outdoor portrait #6
Lili Almog's photographic practice is centred on depictions of women and their private spaces, and her latest body of work, Sisters –a passionate study of Carmelite nuns– takes the subject of female representation to one of its most archetypal and iconic conclusions. In contrast to Almog's previous subjects, women who very much thrive on the vagaries and material realities of Western culture, the sisters of the Carmel Order eschew public life, motherhood, and self-determination and are completely absorbed in monastic seclusion. In this context the wellbeing of the Order, as opposed to the needs of the individual, becomes sacrosanct.
Yet in Almog's empathetic and poignant studies she manages to capture the individuality of her subjects, their enduring dignity and their sense of self worth which belies the collective conformity of monastic life. The economy of style in Almog's photographic composition, a limited colour palette and an emphasis on just a few pictorial components, corresponds aptly with the chaste and austere way of life in the monastery. Almog's portraits achieve a emblematic quality reverberating with, and alluding to, the intensity found in abundance in religious iconography and offer an unfettered and authentic introduction to a group of women destined to remain anonymous in this peculiar cloistered world.
Lili Almog was born in 1961 in Tel Aviv and now lives and works in New York. She received a BFA Photography (Hons) from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 1991.
REGRESAR A LA REVISTA
