Untitled film frame
C-print, 60 x 33.75 inches [152.4 x 85.725 cm]
Limited edition print 1/1
Blazer
A short story by Rocky
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, Rocky elevates each individual frame to a piece of art. Every frame is uniquely composed, printed, and irreplicable.
Blazer blazes the path of a new category of filmmaking and immersive museum installation. The project has three adaptations: an art installation, a short film with an original motion picture score, and a book.
15 min
Drama • Historical • Romance
Untitled film frames
C-print, 60 x 33.75 inches [152.4 x 85.725 cm]
Limited edition prints 1/1
Wrap photo (left to right): NJ Mvondo, Fechi Nkwocha, Maximilian Doubt, Rocky McCorkle, Justin King, Payat Mishra (not pictured: Raul Delarosa)
“Ray’s great four-person photo
holds three:
Aileen and Ray.”
Synopsis
San Francisco, July 4, 2020. Ray, a night shift mail processing clerk at the United States Postal Service, accidently jilts his lovestruck fiancée Aileen the morning she arrives to take him to the fireworks. As he flees into an unexpected odyssey after losing his Chevy Blazer, the free-spirited, autodidact artist, with no intention of becoming a great American photographer, Ray tangentially takes the greatest photograph in history. As the true story goes, shifting three realities in one microsecond.
Blazer is a short film composed almost entirely of still photography, accompanied by an original score and immersive sound design. Featuring actor Justin King and a cast of six, we captured over 25,000 photographs across several years to complete this unique project.
Every 24k frame in Blazer is not just a moment in a sequence but an individually crafted image capable of standing alone. The approach transforms the film from a passive viewing experience into an interactive art form, where audiences can own and engage with its essence in a completely new way.
fig. 1 Cinema unfolding
Illustration expressing time as a sculpture
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 featuring an original score. This horizontal progression through the physical space allows visitors to explore a deeper, internal vertical dimension, fostering a layered emotional and intellectual connection. Like cinema unfolding, the visitor plays a part (fig. 1).
Untitled film frames
C-prints, 60 x 33.75 inches ea. [152.4 x 85.725 cm]
Limited edition print 1/1
It was a six-person photograph. From left to right they were: Vincent Doubt, Aileen Bowlin, Ava Bowlin, Rommel Olivia, and one is nameless. The last person, we’ll call them biker 4. Gathering information from the photo itself, we can glean they were at a public park to presumably watch fireworks, since the photo was taken in the US on Independence Day 2020.
The purpose of this volume is to chronologically reveal the entanglement of six individuals whose lives intersected at a single point in time. The group photo that this story circles around was taken in San Jose (California, United States), on Saturday, July 4, 2020. A USPS worker was the photographer behind one of the greatest images in history.
—Excerpt from the book
Untitled film frames
(starring Raul Delarosa)
C-prints, 60 x 33.75 inches ea. [152.4 x 85.725 cm]
Limited edition print 1/1
Having finished covering his friend’s graveyard shift at the Post Office, and since it was the 4th of July, he met his girlfriend (and her mom, Ava) at a public park to barbecue and watch fireworks. The photographer, let’s call him Burns when referencing his photography; Ray when it comes to casual details of the story; and @rayburnz8 regarding Instagram. Ray and Gerard Majax had worked together at the USPS for years. They had many long, intense conversations. This statement couldn’t have been more true on July 3, 2020. Gerard tried his best to give Ray the news as gently as possible. Diving headfirst into a chat about the news, Ray went pale at the /v/ sound.
—Excerpt from the book
‘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 1/1
Release Date: March 23, 2024
Hardcover / 522 pages / 14 x 10 inches
Blazer, Special Collector's Edition
“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