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Rocky
McCorkle at Little Tree Gallery
The advent of Photoshop has changed forever the way photographers work.
One of the best new trends they’ve embraced as a result of the
software is creating elaborate, large-scale composites from multiple
digital shots, manipulating and mixing each component to become part
of the whole. German photographers seem to have a cartel on this at
the moment – Andreas Gursky is the best known, and Lukas Roth
seems more interesting- but the trend is spreading internationally.
At Little Tree Gallery in San Francisco this October, Bay Area photographer
Rocky McCorkle moved this manipulated composite concept into interesting
new territory. His series of six pieces depicts the (fictional) life
of a (fictional) elderly couple living the (real) modern world from
inside their apartment building, which seemed to be local. Shooting
in 8-by-10 format and assembling his final images from dozens of individual
shots, McCorkle essentially created a still, silent ‘film’
of his subjects’ lives, and displayed them in large and extra-large
formats.
The idea worked beautifully. With everything from foreground to background
in razor focus, the finished pieces had much in common with magazine
advertisements; the viewer revels in McCorkle’s favored rich colors
which repeat throughout the piece, bringing them a consistent visual
language. The woman’s blue jacket picked up the blue in a bowl
on the table; the red in warning label echoed a bag of Doritos; the
crimson carpet on the stairway connected an old fashioned lampshade;
a lime-green shirt echoed a stack of Gatorade cups, a couch, a plate
of actual limes.
In addition to palette, the works connected thematically, and it became
almost a Where’s Waldo game to fine a particular image within
each piece; a grapefruit in one shot led to a shriveled orange in another,
and eventually to the limes; a banana peel was evident in all but one
of the images. Cigarette smoke, white dogs and myriad sweets: sugar,
Sweet’N Low, honey.
More than mere recurring themes however, McCorkle’s work trembled
with an undercurrent of infirmity, of aging, and death: Many props in
the couples’ rooms were cracked, shriveled or peeled; the word
“antique” was visible inside the elevator door, as was a
grinning skull ring on the man’s right hand. One close-up of the
woman’s eyes bloodshot and rheumy. Besides pretty pictures, the
artist created a narrative, a story whose characters faced their own
mortality. Clearly, he cared about them, and as a viewer encountering
these elders in what appeared to be one late chapter of their lives,
and peering into their intimate surrounds, I cared too. What was next?
Clearly the artist left visual threads untied; a third person reclined
on the couch; smoking cigarettes; an infestation of bees in White Sunset-
whose title, like the other five pieces, told little more about these
two.
The good news is that McCorkle, as the gallery explained, is only nine
images into his planned series of twenty-six shots. (The other three
current images are viewable on his Web site.) Their ongoing story will
have more opportunities to pull its pieces together. McCorkle’s
art connects many things: old formats with new, motion pictures with
still ones; Madison Avenue with the Mission District; grandmothers and
grandfathers with digital technology; voyeurism with genuine interest.
More than anything, he encourages us- with the help of software manipulation
– to do what we’ve always done when faced with an interesting
picture: Look closer, and imagine the lives inside.
- Colin Berry
Rocky McCorkle: You And Me On A Sunny Day closed in October
at Little Tree Gallery, San Francisco
Colin Berry is a contributing editor at Artweek
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