Annabel Elgar's photographic works map out a borderland of fragile enclaves and lost directions, exploring themes of 'outsiderdom', social recoil and contemporary alienation. Often shot in shack-like surrounds, the images map out an obsessive undercurrent of activity, where the allusion towards cult and secrecy remains constant and yet the locale is never clarified. A pervasive vulnerability is evident in these works, in the absent protagonist, as well as in his subjects and in the nuances that register between the two. The viewer is made aware of ritualistic behaviour and the continual process of hoarding and preparation.

Conceived as staged 'dramas', akin to cinematic stills, the work blurs the boundary between fact and fiction, extending the British documentary tradition, through the use of theatricality and staged performance. Details become covert signifiers, offering us narrative pointers to clue together what has happened. The work is concerned with sharp awakenings to the loss of innocence. Narratives slowly reveal themselves as unforeseen antidotes to the assumed drama that is being witnessed: photographs where the prerogative is concerned with the exposure of vulnerability in its various forms.

Small and unobtrusive details gradually come into focus, alluding towards some past event, functioning as a bed of metaphor through which we are able to establish a half-knowledge of what we are seeing.