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The Fundraiser

Watt or Fall is my newest body of work. It will be published by Architectural Design (AD) and release Spring 2027.

While an artist-in-residence at Fallingwater I photographed Liliane Kaufmann’s bedroom, returning across four seasons to its bed, window, door, and fireplace. I followed an imaginary “shotlist” as conceived by Samuel Beckett in Paris under occupation. The book features 156 color photographs, an essay by architectural theorist Mark Wigley, and facsimile images of Beckett’s handwritten notebook for Watt (1941-1945). Photographs of Fallingwater under construction in 1936 and Hedrich Blessing’s 1937 documentation place my work alongside earlier representations of one of the world’s best known modern houses.

Fallingwater Institute and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy (501c3) are project partners with initial residency support and sustained engagement toward future public presentations and distribution of Watt or Fall. I’m thrilled that the book also received a generous grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Arts.

I’m now fundraising to cover costs associated with a publication of this quality and scope. If you are interested in being a part of Watt or Fall I would love to discuss ways your support could help bring this book into existence. 

Please read on, or scroll directly to the donation form below, or be in touch to discuss other ideas about how you might like to support Watt or Fall.

The Project

Most buildings are experienced through their two-dimensional representations rather than in person, if at all. Emerging from a year-long residency at Fallingwater (designed 1935, built 1936–39) I embraced the unreasonable task of photographing a building that defies its visual representation. Informed by the writing of Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)—whose entire oeuvre presents meditations on the defeat of reason—I limited my subject within the house exclusively to the intimate domestic space of Liliane Kaufmann’s bedroom.

Concentrated into contiguous photographs, Beckett’s permutational language becomes a time-lapse of the infra-ordinary within Wright’s extraordinary creation. All rooms are witness to endless repetitions which language and photograph concentrate into unexpected patterns.

Watt or Fall contributes to discussions about the photographic voice of architectural space. Bridging architecture and literature, interiority and exteriority—with Wright's insistence on living in nature and Beckett's insistence on living in language—I explore how nature, architecture, and language live in photography.

The Ask

My goal here is to raise $20,000.
With this amount I will be able to cover the fees for the book’s designer, writer, printer, travel to be on press, shipping from Europe, and licensing fees.