Jacob Raupach: Fell

Fell is an investigation into understanding the shifting history of industry in regional New South Wales, using a variety of found and constructed photographs. The works function as both an extension and departure from two previous bodies of work, The Alpine Way and Radiata. Moving beyond the surfaces and facades of the forestry industry, yet still existing within a small area of the south-western mountains known as the Tumut Shire, Fell ultimately explores the struggle between trusting tradition and pursuing progress.

The photograph offers the innate ability to make visible the marks and intersections of industry, labour and society; and by using found and created photographs, Raupach’s aim is to weave and construct a complex, multifaceted history of an area both dependent upon and conflicted with these seemingly unquestionable relationships.

Piecing together where these ideas intersect, overlap and crash together, Fell exemplifies the dangers of believing neither in the future nor the past, but rather remaining hopeful about the stasis of the present.