Lili Almog spent two years visiting Carmelite monasteries in Israel, Palestine and the United States to create the series ‘Perfect Intimacy’, reflecting her interest in photographing women in private settings. She first visited the monastery on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel, where the Carmelite order was founded in 1200. Originally allowed only to photograph the nuns in the garden, she gradually gained their trust, becoming, as they joked, the first Jewish woman to sleep there.

From Mount Carmel Almog journeyed to the Carmelite monastery in Bethlehem, Palestine, where she became concerned with investigating the nuns’ relationship to their confined surroundings. This photograph of the dining room there has a stillness that conveys something of the atmosphere of the monasteries – ‘bubbles in the middle of estranged, non-religious neighbourhoods’ as Almog says.

The series is an excellent example of an extended documentary project. The photographer’s deep engagement with her subjects – in part an investigation by a Jewish woman into Christian women’s beliefs – creates images of startling intimacy.