Jerusalem is not just a city; it’s an idea. For millennia, it has been frequented by visitors of all faiths and social classes seeking to interact with its sanctity, entailing cycles of violent battles for its control, catalysing the need to relocate the idea of Jerusalem to places far from its physical boundaries. Analogous Jerusalem is a five-year photographic journey exploring these “analogous” shrines in various landscapes, capturing the continuous topography of pilgrimage with elements belonging to mutually exclusive categories: the sacred and the profane. A three-part essay explores the translation of the sacred sites from Jerusalem to Europe, the rituals of virtual pilgrimage common among mediaeval nuns and the history of photographic journeys. Together, the images and text construct a travelogue through places that are perhaps more “real” than Jerusalem itself.

Gili Merin is an architect and photographer based in Vienna. She holds a PhD from the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in London and had studied architecture at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, the UdK in Berlin, and the Waseda University of Tokyo. Formerly the head of history and theory of architecture at the Royal College of Art (RCA) and a diploma unit master at the AA, Merin currently holds a post-doctoral position at the TU Wien. Merin was trained as an architect and researcher at OMA in Rotterdam and Kuehn Malvezzi in Berlin, and had lectured and led workshops at various institutions, including Harvard University Graduate School of Design, The Museum of Modern Art, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne (EPFL), and the Universities of Syracuse, Porto, Aarhus, Rice, Carelton, and Aalto. Her photographs have been exhibited in several exhibitions and publications worldwide, including the Venice Architecture Biennale, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, HKW Berlin, the Rotterdam Biennale, and the Seoul Biennale for Urbanism.