Rocky McCorkle – You and Me on a Sunny Day
Gilda Todar was born in 1927 in San Mateo, California, and this is her first starring role. An avid moviegoer and bridge player, her favorite film is Sunset Boulevard. Like the fictional character she embodies in You & Me, she has her own exhilarating connection to the island country as a winner of the New Zealand Lotto. As a youngster, she had aspirations of becoming an actress and landing this part has inspired her to follow her dreams. In Todar’s words, “In my next life, I will pursue acting.”
Rocky McCorkle’s You & Me On A Sunny Day is a feature length non-motion picture comprised of 135 large scale photographic stills. A five year project started in 2007, McCorkle’s sequential series follows the life of 84 year-old widow Millie Holden as her everyday routine gets run off course by a reminiscent 1950’s movie marathon. From the deepest folds of memory, flashbacks of her late husband propel her into a vivid narrative that gets stranger and more claustrophobic with each turn. Based on Millie’s own experience of an event centered elsewhere, You & Me is a psychological thriller about the malleability of memory and the impact that fictional media has on her way of life.Echoing the big screen, the exhibition prints are 40″ x 80″. Each photograph’s rich color and clarity reveal a technical prowess hidden behind McCorkle’s compelling aesthetic. The entire body of work was shot with a Cambo 8 x 10 camera using a specific combination of chrome and negative film. Shooting and scanning thousands of sheets of film, McCorkle digitally assembled the high resolution images — upwards of 22 in a single still — into unique full focus photomontages. With You & Me On A Sunny Day, McCorkle has created an emotionally charged counterpoint to modern day cinema.
“The postcards, pictures, and stamps hanging on the refrigerator door make me think of when I was twenty-something and used to photograph everything. I was always obsessed with the sun (do you remember?). Every chance I’d get I would run to the window or the nearest open field to take a portrait of the sun (hundreds; I took 88 in Auckland alone). After we had lived here for a countless number of years, we ran out of space to display them. The knick-knack cupboard transformed into a memorabilia repository or depository or roadside memorial, crawling with accumulated snapshots of our kin and various suns. More accurately, different or separate portraits of the one and only sun (if the sun is always the “same sun” then why isn’t each sun portrait a spitting image of every other?)”
More images and the entire beautiful story on Rocky McCorkle’s website; found on Lenscratch.
Rocky McCorkle is an internationally exhibited photographer who lives in San Francisco. He received his BFA in Photography from The Ohio State University and his MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has shown extensively throughout the United States and abroad including Boston, New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Toronto, and Busan, Korea. In 2012, McCorkle’s You & Me On A Sunny Day was selected as the Analog Winner for EXPOSURE 2011 International Photography Award.