My art practice could be seen as pure cinema—a fusion of the photographer, the filmmaker, and the scriptwriter. Blazer is a ciné-roman, which is defined as a film-novel, containing only still imagery and original musical score.

800 still frames belong fully to the genre of fiction, with one frame being inspired by a true event. The plot is inspired by the true story of an amateur photographer who was shot dead as he took a picture of his family in 2011 that freeze-framed his killer and killer’s accomplice in the act, synchronously creating a once-in-a-lifetime photo (No 715). The film recontextualizes events that led to and proceeded his unbelievable photograph.

The ciné-roman had a bafflingly huge scope and was daunting to materialize. Led by actor Justin King, a cast of six actors and I shot more than 12,000 high resolution images chronologically over two days to create this volume of work. Before then, the pandemic had turned this project to concrete.

Through an array of characters, locations, and backstories within the story, the film chronicles the narrator’s first pandemic, the degradation of political discourse in the US, and criticizes the sickening increase of gun-violence and gun-related deaths of Black Americans. In response to the permanent trauma of watching death on camera, the narrator searches for answers to what life looks like after a death, nihilistically contemplates the purpose, if any, of life, and tries to capture the words for an event that words can’t capture.

I’m not sure if my simulacrum is on par with the original, but since I allowed my inner self to drive, it is closer to the kind of work I’m trying to make. On third thought, the film seems to simply be about concretizing life, a personal means of avoiding death. Spectators of this film, or any film for that matter, are privileged to see what Ray can’t after it abruptly ends.