Daniel Sackheim: The City Unseen

photography monograph for Daniel Sackheim / Hat and Beard Press
Between Midnight and Dawn, essay by Foster Hirsch

From Foster Hirsh's introduction:
As in classic noir, the essential ingredient in The City Unseen is Sackheim’s mastery of chiaroscuro. Like John Alton, Hollywood’s preeminent film noir cinematographer, he paints with light and shadow. “I am always interested in how the light plays against the façades of buildings and the geometry of the architecture,” Sackheim says. I play with the shading and the chiaroscuro to shape the light to draw the viewer’s eye.... “What gives a still image its cinematic quality is the pull of narrative,” Sackheim observes. “However, I’m interested in an image that suggests a story rather than one that completes a story: what draws me is suggestion, not explanation. I aim to create what I think of as a ‘curiosity gap,’ a quiet tension that draws the viewer in and invites speculation.”

From Daniel Sackheim's closing notes:
My earliest recollection is of being someone who felt most at ease observing from the margins. Long before I picked up a camera—or imagined a career as a film editor or director—I was drawn to watching others from a distance, trying to understand how to move through the world without feeling exposed.... The resulting body of work emerges from the space where intimacy meets distance. It allows me to be close enough to form an emotional connection with the subject, yet far enough away to remain unseen, exploring a narrative that exists in the narrow space between certainty and shadow. In that place of ambiguity, where observation becomes a story and the unseen becomes felt—The City Unseen lives.

104 pages
8.75 x 12 inches