Waterfall started as a study showing a couple in a room with a typewriter: both lovers are writers. Robert abandoned this idea, but kept the pose of the man with his naked back to the viewer. This marked a turning point in Robert’s thinking about his series, where a symbolic, Eden-like outdoor setting replaces an interior location. The stream of water suggests orgasm, as well as baptism: new life through sex. As with the painting, Flame, the identity of the male lover is not revealed. He is something of a cipher, a projection of the woman’s imagination. The woman peers out from behind the man’s back as if wondering whether the couple might have been discovered and the secret of their relationship revealed. In several of the studies for Waterfall, Robert experiments with the use of a cinematic over-the-shoulder shot. The man offers protection, but he is also a screen or a personality the woman hides behind.