103. Languid Pace

104. Audible Gasp

This is one of the few images that is a single, uncomposited exposure. We only took 2 captures of this moment that day because I only own ten film holders, and we had many other shots on the shot list. We took this at the same time as the flashback sequence (4:00pm-ish), but on different days, so that the light would be consistent.

105. Television Still No. 11

106. Returning To The Chalk Outlined Person That I Know He Is

107. "Jack... JACK"

108. "JACK"

It's no BAM (Copenhagen)

Berkeley Art Museum (At The Opening Last Night)

Virtual Tour (the blurry iPhone version)

Rocky McCorkle
United States, born 1978

Movie & Marathon
You & Me On A Sunny Day 109/135
2012

C-print
Museum purchase: Request of Phoebe Apperson Hearst, by exchange 2012.13

McCorkle’s series of 135 large-scale photographs titled You & Me On A Sunny Day is conceived as a silent film in the form of a sequence of stills. The works, seen in order, tell the story of an elderly woman recollecting, and at times dreaming about, her deceased husband and his youth as a champion long-distance runner. All of the interior shots were made in the artist’s own San Francisco apartment, which he transformed into a complex mise-en-scène for the unfolding narrative. To complete his monumental project, McCorkle spent every Sunday for five years photographing his downstairs neighbor, Gilda Todar, in the lead role.

The astonishing clarity and richness of detail in the prints is the result of a painstaking process of shooting up to twenty-two individual high-resolution photographs for each final image, using digital technology to create a fantastically seamless montage.

Ko reacts to the BAM show

109. Movie & Marathon

This piece is now on display (40"x80") at the Berkeley Art Museum in At The Edge: Recent Acquisitions, from July 18-December 23, 2012.

Among the artists included are Louise Bourgeois, William Eggleston, and Ralph Eugene Meatyard.

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/edge

110. Head In The Clouds

111. Back To My Time & Place From Another Time & Place

112. Jarring Clank & Thud

113. Yanked Back From The Grips Of Fiction

114. My Life Is A Still Life

115. Cinema Influenced Dream

116. Hermetically Sealed World Aglow With Movie Credits

Ko reads Millie's Soliloquy (Denmark)

Ko receives a present in the mail (Denmark)

117. The End Is The Start

I didn't have this image in my initial vision, only after laying out the book. This bookend image was inspired by J. Brent Large.

118. Still Life with Millie's Photographs & Jack's Trophies

Among the elements in this image: Gloria Swanson head-shot from Sunset Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard refrigerator magnets, Mt. Eden (Auckland, N.Z.) postcard, torn photo of Young Jack taken near Fort Point on the Sausalito side of the Golden Gate Bridge, and aged running trophies.

The narrative is foreshadowed and can be decoded just by examining this image-the influence of Sunset Boulevard and the exact location that she revisits in her dreams.

The ominous yellow lighting was done with a long exposure of a few minutes mixed with a palette of different strength flashlights. All done in-camera.

119. Still Life with Marathon Medals & Blue Macaw

This was definitely the most complicated still life because it had the most moving parts. I purchased the display cabinet on eBay a few years ago, but it wasn't until February 2012 when I actually photographed it. Again, I like to make things difficult on myself, therefore it was important to me that all of the pictures, medals, and newspaper clippings were created by myself.

One example of this: I built in that Jack was a boxer before he ever took to running. Therefore I created a trophy with the exact date that corresponded precisely with these facts.

There are a few B&W images of fictional Young Millie in the background that are age-accurate for her in the 50's. I really enjoy this one (oval gold frame on the left) because in real life it is only about an inch tall.

This image is literally the accumulation of an overly-specific storyline and 5 years of gathering and creating props. This is the last photo that I captured, and will ever capture, for this body of work.

120. Still Life with Jack's Canes & Pocket Watches

This is my favorite still life because it came together so organically. I initially wanted to do the flashback sequence in black-and-white, but it seemed too out of place. Maybe that's why I'm really fond of this one because of the B&W photograph of Will. Or, maybe I'm just a sucker for the smiling skull cane.

I'm looking forward to using 8x10-inch B&W film in my next non-motion feature.

121. Still Life with Bridge Trophies & Read Books

This image is made up of 80% Gilda's real items: her acquired bridge trophies from over the years, orange box, tape deck, double mint gum, books, and a few too many other items to name here.

From 2007-2012, Gilda and I shot nearly every Sunday at 5:30pm. She would always knock on my door at around 4:30pm. Before I even opened the door she would say, "Hi Rocky, am I too early?" Then with the door open she would continue, "Here I brought you something..."

Gilda would then hand me anything from a pack of gum (the one in this pic) to leftovers from her Sunday bingo tourney.

122. Still Life with Serving Tray & Statues

The Sputnik lamp with Edison bulbs was one if the hardest props for me to track down. I searched for a few months, and paid a pretty penny, to get that specific kind of lamp that was prominent in the 1950's. Gilda is flashing back to a specific time in the 50's, therefore I wanted her surroundings to feel like they are stuck in the past also. I tried to use space-travel-inducing props like the sputnik lamp or the metal toy robot to communicate a metaphysical leap into her subconscious.

123. Still Life with Raisin Boxes & Great Dane

This snippet from the backstory came from something my father did and still does. I built in the morning ritual of Jack eating one banana and a small box of raisins every day. The accumulated boxes and the absence of figures in this scene are meant to symbolize the passing of time and all of the raisins that Jack would have consumed in the years after his death.

A coincidental occurrence was that the newspaper that I chose to place on the couch just happened to be July 30, 2007--both the date that this fictional story is set and the day that Ingmar Bergman died. Bergman's 'Wild Strawberries' was one of my biggest influences narratively--an older person revisiting and re-entering their past in a surrealist manner.

124. Still Life with Movie Camera & Skulls

This picture includes a pile of New Zealand stamps from the 1950s, the framed photos were shot in 2008, and the wooden figure with the necklace was meant to symbolize Old Jack.

The skull in the center of the frame came from Africa and I'm 88% sure that it isn't real.

125. Still Life with Accumulated Snapshots & Sun Portraits

This image is made up of both real and fictional props. In order to ground the narrative, I incorporated some of Gilda's real traits/ hobbies into the backstory; all of the trophies are Gilda's bridge trophies in real life. In addition, the small frame on the console table is an actual picture of Gilda when she was 3 years-old, taken in 1930.

The rest of the images and newspaper articles on the wall are images that I created for the sole purpose of being in the background of the scenes. The images of young Jack were aged and given specific color-washes that represent accurate color deterioration for photographs from the 1950's. The newspaper articles are fictional too; I altered dates, names, and pictures to ensure that most of the fictional props were created by myself.