Cristiano Berti

Cristiano Berti is a self-portrait consisting of the photographs of seven people who have the same name as the artist, with the seventh being an English actor who plays the role of a character named Cristiano Berti in Dario Argento’s film Tenebrae (1982).

About Cristiano Berti

Dario Argento shot Tenebrae in 1982 and the film was presented to the public the same year. The director gave the name Cristiano Berti to the character of a literary critic and serial killer in the film, played by the actor John Steiner (1941 – 2022). I asked Argento if he remembered how the idea of ​​giving that name came about, and he replied that he had no idea. In fact, the choice could have been made completely randomly.

Having discovered this fictional alter ego of mine made me want to work on a project surrounding homonymy, that is, on personal identity. When I created Cristiano Berti, the internet, which rightly abounds with Argento fans, regularly associated my name and surname with John Steiner. The same thing happens today too. Anyone who bears the name and surname of fictional characters, or even public figures, may encounter the same dynamic of identity dispossession.

Due to the rise of social media, people’s relationship with namesakes have profoundly changed, with their namesakes information being one click away. However, in March 2003, I had to go to the public telephone point in Turin, where there were telephone directories for various Italian cities, and consult them one by one to find my namesakes. When I met them, together with Piero Ottaviano, I had no idea what their physical appearance was like, their face. Now the relationship with homonymy has, so to speak, normalized. The search for Steiner was particularly complicated, because he had left the cinema just under fifteen years before and seemed to have disappeared into thin air. I eventually found him thanks to the help of Tim Lucas. Steiner lived in Los Angeles and was in real estate sales. When I called him, we conversed in Italian, a language he knew very well having worked in dozens of Italian films. He said he was ready to be photographed.

Cristiano Berti‘s photographs were taken following a rule from the first shot of the film in which Steiner appears: medium shot from below, light coming from the left, leaning against a wall with something hanging on it (in the film, a large framed poster), posing. The photos in Italy were taken by Piero Ottaviano, the one in Los Angeles was taken by Matt Molchen. Once the suitable place was chosen, everyone was told to freely choose a pose. In Steiner’s shot, he crosses his arms, as happens in Argento’s film – we can see that this was his favorite pose.

© Cristiano Berti

2024

The fact that his name appeared in a Dario Argento film was a mere coincidence, however the way Cristiano Berti has distanced himself from situations in the film is certainly not. He does no more than hint at the ambiguity and undefined nature of changing roles: in the film it’s between victim and executioner, in the portrait gallery it’s between himself and another. But there’s another exchange too – between a genre film and an artistic study. In fact Cristiano Berti doesn’t hide the source of his idea, he doesn’t present it as the fruit of his curiosity but as a dialogue with the person who revealed to him the existence of a namesake. When does an idea form? Who suggests it first? Anonymous individuals and namesakes highlight that “void” each of us must form inside ourselves to create ideas, feelings and visions.

© Francesca Pasini

excerpt from «If my Name is the Same as Yours…», in Cristiano Berti, exhibition catalogue, Turin: Carbone.to, 2003, p. 22