Daniel Sackheim, Unseen – Portfolio Competition Winner

“There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

As a child, I suffered a paralyzing fear of the dark. So terrified was I of the imagined creatures hiding under the bed, or lurking within the dark recesses of my closet, that I would often drift off to sleep with a flashlight clutched in my hand. The Irony is not lost on me that my current artistic preoccupations take me deep into seedy back alleys and labyrinths of sketchy downtown streets, illuminated by flickering streetlights that barely penetrate the darkness of an often foreboding and claustrophobic urban jungle.

This body of work explores one facet of life in a city known as the birthplace of Film Noir. Despite my unease, my curiosity and inquisitiveness are rooted in a need to discover the secrets that lie hidden deep within even the most forbidding corners of the city. To excavate the past, to stare into the faces of ghosts long forgotten.

Inspired by the visual esthetic of Film Noir, this work explores isolated fragments of subjects once there but now gone, as a means of shining a light on what is hidden, if only for an instant.