Untitled film frame
C-print, 60 x 33.75 inches [152.4 x 85.725 cm]
Limited edition print, 1 of 1
B L A Z E R
“The slim film is structured around a series of chance encounters in the city of San Francisco, while also giving the director some asides on broader concepts like the brief history of photography, the nature of empathy and perspective, and human thought.”
Untitled film frames
C-print, 60 x 33.75 inches [152.4 x 85.725 cm]
Limited edition prints, 1 of 1
Synopsis
New Year’s Eve, 2020. San Francisco, California.
Inspired by true events.
In a flash of brilliance, the narrator watches Rey Burns (Justin King) create the greatest picture of all time. A picture the world knows nothing about.
“Blazer” is a historiographic metafiction that takes the real experience of an ordinary government worker named Rey on New Year’s Eve as its fictitious landing point. The slim film is structured around a series of chance encounters in the city of San Francisco, while also giving the director some asides on broader concepts like the brief history of photography, the nature of empathy and perspective, and human thought.
The image, “View from the Artist at the Lake,” a masterwork of Modern North American photography, was declared the greatest picture of all time. As the result is revealed in the film’s grand finale, the young man’s masterpiece shouldn’t be celebrated because it is comfortable, but because it’s true.
Runtime: 15 min
Wrap photo (left to right): NJ Mvondo, Fechi Nkwocha, Maximilian Doubt, Rocky McCorkle, Justin King, Payat Mishra (not pictured: Raul Delarosa)
Unrolling cinema into the museum
“Blazer” blazes the trail for a new category of filmmaking and immersive museum installation. The project has three adaptations: art installation, live-action short film with original score, and book.
A groundbreaking production that merges cinema with fine art. The first film where every frame is a singular work of art, never to be reproduced. Unlike traditional filmmaking, which prioritizes storytelling through moving images, “Blazer” elevates each individual frame to a piece of art. Every frame is uniquely composed, printed, one-of-a-kind, and irreplaceable. The approach transforms the film from a passive viewing experience into an interactive art form, where audiences can own and engage with it in a completely new way.
At this point in time, “all time” in the history of photography was 1820—2020, therefore the film is told through two hundred years of hermetic, historical, and live-action pictures. Featuring actor Justin King and a cast of six, hermetically referencing the pivotal year of 2020, the film was made from over 20,000 pictures of San Francisco. The short film adaptation is composed entirely of still pictures accompanied with an original score.
fig. 1 Cinema unfolding
Illustration expressing time as a sculpture
The plan for "Blazer" is an art installation at a dim-lit Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. An original film score softly playing throughout the space. Visitors are greeted with a larger-than-life, high-resolution film still at the bottom of the rotunda’s spiral ramp. This is the first frame in the film. Visitors then proceed to the next frame in the story, and so on, ascending all of the way up to level six of the Rotunda, in what can best be described as a continuous immersive film experience. Like cinema unfolding, the visitor plays a part (fig. 1).
The art installation is scalable, yet boundless. Visitors journey through various physical spaces, such as museums or custom-designed venues, engaging with an original story presented through oversized, chronological film frames, integrated lighting design, and an immersive soundscape.
“Blazer”
Winner CENTER Santa Fe — Social Award
“I responded to the work titled Blazer. Just this week, we have read the news about three ‘wrong address’ shootings across the country. We live through a regular drumbeat of mass shootings and mourn the lives of too many people lost to gun violence. Inspired by a true event, the work recreates and reframes a similar event and presents it as film stills. The production level, the lighting, and the casting all lend to this gruesome event a certain polish and gloss, enticing us to linger and to look for a little longer.
These images not only prompt us to think on current events but also draw attention to the struggles our nation faces.”
Untitled film frames
(starring Fechi Nkwocha)
C-prints, 60 x 33.75 inches ea. [152.4 x 85.725 cm]
Limited edition prints, 1 of 1
Release Date: March 23, 2024
Hardcover / 522 pages / 14 x 10 inches
Blazer, Special Collector's First Edition
(50 copies)
“Blazer is a timely project that resonates with many issues of our times. As a photographic body of work, it is quite different from other photobooks projects because it blends chronophotography with a script, dialogues, and staging much like a moving picture. That's also what makes Rocky McCorkle’s work so unique, combining cinema-like images, an inventive and detailed aesthetic research, with the drama that characterizes theater.
The endeavor is impressive, from the dedicated amount of work preparing and making the project, but also turning its pages, reading and contemplating the physical book, while feeling emotional. Blazer’s pictures are moving in many ways, because they are built to trigger emotions. As Susan Sontag wrote, “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.” (On Photography, 1977) McCorkle does both, revealing what is shaking American society today: exploring in the most aesthetic way, while disclosing a sense of justice.”
—Pierre-François Galpin, 2025