Retreat

Retreat is a series of portraits of residents from a private Melbourne hotel that provides accommodation for a transitioning sector of the population. The residents are photographed with a blanket covering their faces and upper bodies. These images communicate invisibility but do so in a context where anonymity and retreat from social dialogue are obviously connected to social inequality. Conceptually the idea of retreat is a temporary position of choice, however in these images it extends forever locked within the frame. Jacqueline Felstead is a photo-media artist who received an Asialink residency in Singapore, 2009 and a residency at Banff, Canada 2005.
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