FFWD >> PORTRAIT
In the artwork of the artist Mirko Credito, the still camera and the video camera have always been essential, as a documentation instrument for tangible sculptural operations, as in the case of the Fritture (Fried), and as an essential medium, as happened in the case of the series presented: Fast - Forward.
For the Fast - Forward series, Credito looks to obsolete mediums compared to the era of the image, he uses a technology that is now considered archaic, an analogue device. The photographs are actually frames chosen from shots, made by himself, with a non-digital camera, on 8 mm magnetic tape in 4: 3 format.
For each subject, the artist makes about a minute of footage, then he connects the camera to a screen and reproduces the recorded section with the “fast forward” active and he instinctively selects the instant thatwill become the protagonist of the final image. The final work is a frametaken in black white where the choice of Credito, made by the impulseaesthetics, generates two unique and unrepeatable elements. The firstis given by the subject in the exact instant in which the tape is stopped, the second are the lines of distortion of the fast - forward that overlap the image,
The attempt to control the artistic process and the awareness of never being able to actually obtain it are the base of all the Credito research, they are the starting point for each of his investigations and for all of his works.
The artist, thanks to the use of the forward fast, makes it impossibleto find exactly the identical frame with the exact same distortion effect,this create a unique artwork. At the same time as he pauses the frame in order to make his selection, analog technology betrays him and theeffect of fast - forward is different from the one he wanted. Creditogenerates a derisory attempt to capture an instant, his act is dictated by an impulse to control the world but fails because of the nature of
the analogical medium used and because of the nature of reality that is impossible to control.
The Fast - Forward >> Portrait series focuses on the portraits made by the artist to friends and acquaintances, who volunteered to take part in the shoot, and to third parties to whom the shot was unknowingly realised. Credito ends up accumulating a series of portraits made with a creative process that “distort” the line between art and documentation. The artist is part of a tradition of photographers who, from the twentieth century to today, have chosen the portrait as the preponderant subject of their research and have, voluntarily or not, composed an archive ofimages that offers a spitting image of contemporary society.
From the unfinished project of August Sander Men of the twentieth century, that is a systematic campaign in which the most typical figures of German society are portrayed, up to Thomas Ruff who, using thesame serial method as his own teachers the Becher spouses, achieves, towards the middle of the eighties, a series of portraits of busts of anonymous characters, distinguished by the absence of dialogue between the photographer and the subject.
In line with this artistic research, Credito ends up creating an archive of portraits, not methodologically organised, but nevertheless attempting to capture “distorted” fragments of the contemporary era.
