Nick Parisse, Photography ’09, captured five essential yet unrecognized workspaces at The Museum at FIT (“A Rare Glimpse,” p. 32) and biophilic interior designer Hilary Catterall ’06 at the Cookfox offices (“The Nature of Work”). Parisse, a photojournalist who usually travels the world documenting migration stories, serves as the director of photography at Dawning, a multimedia investigative reporting organization. In May, FotoEvidence published his first book, Pipe Dreams, developed in collaboration with Dawning, about the impact of Kenya’s water crisis on women and girls. Parisse appreciated the change of pace for this assignment. “What impressed me most was the professionalism of the staff,” he says. “I saw painstaking dedication to work and craft, like restoring a 19th-century dress bodice to its original proportions one stitch at a time.”
Above: Parisse’s attic office. “It’s peaceful up here. I painted the walls dark gray to minimize light in the room. The carpet is from a small market in Niger that I fell in love with while on assignment. I have an ivory cane from Bangladesh inlaid with gold and elephant bone from the Mongol Empire. Same with the two wooden soldier figures. I also have a Chinese king and queen carved from bone and a bone storage container from Indonesia. I bought the large wooden male figure to the right in Kenya. A few books, a printed archive and photographs of my mother set alongside ceramic statues of Jesus and Padre Pio with her cremated remains. There are also many loon figurines, as I love them.”